Squawk on the Street 2ND Hour 8/28/25

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Carl Quintanilla (0:53)

Good morning, welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Contest of Brewer, David Faber, live at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Sara Eisen has the morning off. Market's a little bit red this morning, as Nvidia's down about 2.5%. It's unwinding a few days of recent gains. We're gonna talk all about the quarter and the guidance that we got last night from Jensen Wong. IT is a sector down about half a percent. Treasury's reacting fairly well. Actually, the long bond's back below 4.9, as we see a lot of steepening in the recent days.

When we get to the hour, upheaval at the CDC, we'll talk to a former director of the agency, Dr. Mandy Cohen, about the firing of the new CDC director who was just sworn in last month. As we said, NVIDIA losing some steam despite the strong quarter. We'll talk to an analyst who says the stock is still a top pick. And OpenAI making some news this hour. A big international push to gain share in enterprise. Details on that breaking story, straight ahead.

David Faber (1:44)

First though, let's get to some housing data which just crossed and Diana Olek has that for us. Diana.

Diana Olick (1:50)

David, pending home sales in July dropped 0.4% from June and were 0.7% higher from July of last year, according to the realtors. The street was looking for a tiny gain of 0.3%, so let's just call it even. Now, this count is based on signed contracts, so people out inking deals in July. When the average rate on the 30 year fixed was moving higher, you can see it began falling in August, but that is not reflected in these numbers. Regionally, sales dropped month to month in the northeast and midwest. They were flat in the south and they rose in the west. Interesting because the west is the most expensive region. Now, again, while rates did drop some in August, just 16% of Realtors surveyed said they expect an increase in buyer traffic over the next three months. Now, given that these are signed contracts, I also want to note a very recent report from Redfin that found these contracts being canceled at the highest rate since they began tracking this in 2017 15% of homes that went under contract in July says Redfin were canceled. Carl, back to you.

Carl Quintanilla (2:52)

Diana Oleg, thank you very much. We got some more breaking news this morning from Lisa Cook and the lawsuit that's been filed. Our Steve Leesman's been going through the documents. Steve, what do we have?

Steve Liesman (3:02)

We have now the key issues, which is what is Lisa Cook asking the court to do? Obviously, this is a case where she is suing President Trump as well as the Federal Reserve and Jay Powell. And I'll get to that for the reason why. But she's asking the court to declare her firing unlawful and void by the president.

The president's termination of Cook is a clear violation of law, the lawsuit says, and that governors can only be removed for cause. This is part of a broader thing where the suit is trying to protect, essentially, the independence of the Federal Reserve, declaring that unsubstantiated allegation does not constitute cause that is called for in the Federal Reserve Act as a pretext for firing. They want the court to declare that the right to notice and a hearing was violated. This is the part that I think is interesting, asking for an injunction against the Federal Reserve and Jay Powell in carrying out the president's quote, illegal attempt to fire Cook. Couple of quick things that we've already reported. The four-cause provision is essential to protecting the feds independence, the lawsuit says, and the four-cause position has been defined as inefficiency, neglect, duty or malfeasance in office does not support the rule for policy over policy disagreements. I'll leave it there, guys. The key being that they're saying that if this was whatever allegations are made, there's no finding by a court about this and that these were acts that were created or done before she was a Federal Reserve Governor. This really sets up an historic battle in the courts over the president's power and over the Fed's independence.