Astronaut Mike Massimino: Living in Space 3/18/25

0:00Bring in show music, please. Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod. The Federal Reserve begins a two-day meeting. Rockefeller Capital Management CEO Greg Fleming says, please hold. If you're the Fed now, you are truly data dependent with no ability really to move ahead of it because you don't know what the it is because it's a completely unique time. And two astronauts long overdue for their return to Earth, hitching a ride on a SpaceX craft. NASA vet Mike Massimino on the journey and the privatization and commercialization of space travel. This is really what NASA has turned its attention to.

0:41Really going back to the space shuttle program, well before I was an astronaut. The hope was that commercialization would start back then. Plus, the presidential phone call expected today between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. EV innovation in China and Google making its largest acquisition ever$32 billion for cloud security startup Wiz. You know, nobody beats the Wiz. I think those commercials, how old are they? Do you remember? Very old. Are they? Yeah. It's Tuesday, March 18th, 2025. SquawkPod begins right now. Stand back to bye in three, two, one. Cue it, please. Good morning, everybody.

1:23Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We're live from the Nasdaq market site in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick along with Joe Kernan. Andrew is off today. All of the major averages were up for the second day in a row yesterday. We saw some gains and some positivity looking at things. I guess we're waiting to hear what happens with the Fed meeting. That's going to be the next real catalyst for things in the market. But the Treasury market right now, the 10-year is at 431. The two-year is at 4.04%, and that Fed meeting starts today. We have the decision that comes tomorrow. I guess when it was all said and done, we liked the retail sales number.

2:00Somebody did. Pretty good. There were some good base core numbers that were inside of it. And the market didn't close on its highs by any stretch. It was up over 500 for a while. The Dow closed up 350. But the S &P managed to gain 36 points, So it was down 9 % from the highs. It was a gain of 0.6 % of a percent. So now 8.4%. We don't have to do it new every time. And the NASDAQ was weak throughout the session, but finally did manage to close positively. But it was off its best levels, too. But I don't know. The most pressure from the NASDAQ was with NVIDIA, the conference that they have, too. We're in the, you know, we're in that netherworld of maybe we're in a correction that gets worse than a correction or maybe it's already over.

2:51Just like the retail sales number, we'll know after we see what happens. News from Frontier Airlines CEO Barry Biffle. I like that name. Announcing that the carrier will begin offering customers a free checked bag, free assigned seats, and free tickets. No, wait a minute. Free ticket changes. This comes less than a week after Southwest said it would start charging for bags. Biffle says, in his words, we want the Southwest customer to become our customers. The press release just out says Frontier Airlines is ready to be your new love. And you know that. Get a ticker symbol. Yeah, because it's in Dallas's Love Airport.

3:33That's stock down 15, oh, 15 percent for the one year. That's an interesting move to go after Southwest, who no one thought would ever actually raise or come in with baggage fees. That was not their brand. That's not what they did. Southwest decided that it was a lot of money that they couldn't leave on the table anymore. So we'll see how that goes out. They were the only ones that could do it. They reminded me of when MCI used to be able to do things no one else could do. And the guy running the place went to jail. But I don't know why. I don't know whether Frontier necessarily. How do you do it?

4:03If you need to stay competitive, if even Southwest had to throw in the towel. Maybe they'd do it for a while. President Trump, you probably know this by now, is going to be speaking about the war in Ukraine today with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president. Trump making that announcement last night on his social network. The president is looking for Putin to accept a 90-day ceasefire in the three-year-old war. Ukraine has already agreed to a pause in the fighting. In his social media message, President Trump said many details on an agreement have been reached, but more work remains. The Kremlin says the call will take place between 9 and 11 Eastern time this morning.

4:50Hope they have a translator. Otherwise, what's the point? Shares of Chinese EV company BYD. Old habits die hard. I still think it's Boyd Gaming. When did Boyd Gaming move to China? It's not. It's BYD. And Boyd Gaming's still around. Jumped in Hong Kong trading overnight. The company announced the new technology, claiming it can charge an electric vehicle almost as quickly as it takes to fill a gasoline car. It says it's Super E Platform. It's capable of peak charging speeds of 1 ,000 kilowatts. Not gigawatts. How many did you need for that DeLorean? I don't know. Giga something. Doc? 1.21 gigawatts.

5:40Gigawatts. Gigawatts. For Michael J. Fox to go that fast. Anyway, it allows cars to travel 250 miles with just five minutes of charging. By contrast, Tesla's latest superchargers offer a peak charging rate of about half that, and it allows for a similar range, the 250 miles, but it takes 15 minutes of charging. I mean, that's the game changer when you get charging super fast. That's the most, because it just compounds on, you see the lines when people go. I mean, if you're on an interstate and you see a line of, I won't stop. I won't stop for gas if everything is full. I won't either. I'll wait for the next one.

6:20It's like, I can find a gas pump. Right. And Google might be ready to take whiz. Not a whiz, but to take whiz. Google parent alphabet is in advanced stocks to buy cybersecurity firm whiz. No, not the whiz, if you're from this part of the world, because you know nobody beats the whiz. But it's about$30 billion. That's according to the Wall Street Journal. I think those commercials, how old are they? Do you remember? Very old and big. Are they? Yeah. Completed a deal of that size would be Google's largest ever by far. Wiz provides cybersecurity software for cloud computing companies, including Google, which was looking at acquiring the company last summer we were talking about, because I remember talking about the Wiz back then, too, for$23 billion.

7:09But the Wiz, not the Wiz, Wiz walked away, saying it would pursue an IPO. A deal could put the Trump administration's appetite for antitrust fights to the test. Google is already involved in two other high-profile cases, and CNBC has reached out to the company for comment. If you're interested, there's an interesting editorial today in the Wall Street Journal about cleaning up after Lena Kahn and how much needs to be reversed. I mean, one person can do a lot of stuff if you get into it. There are questions if Lena Kahn, some of her prevailing thoughts will continue in this new administration. Some of them were kind of populist.

7:52That's this weird, I don't know what you call this brand of conservatism. The continuum where J.D. Vance agreed with Lena Kahn on some of the areas? Right. But I can't imagine that it's not going to change significantly. Well, Wiz walked away from the last deal with Google because apparently they were concerned about being able to get through antitrust considerations on this. So maybe they've looked at this and think that it's a better situation than it was in the past. That's certainly what this indicates. Well, the first paragraph will Andrew Ferguson. He's at a crossroads. He's at a fork in the road.

8:27Will he take it? Will he take it? whether to continue his predecessor's misadventures, antitrust misadventures. So that's the way it's. No, that's going to be a big, the big question. You know, that was something that. When we had him on, he said, I'm going to, I'm not just going to tie things up just to, just to tie things up. No, but he also said that if you are a company that has made any political statements, he thinks that that is potentially an indication that you have a monopoly, Because why else would you potentially alienate 50 percent of your customer base unless you felt you could do it without any fear of losing your business?

9:10They quote the CNBC interview here, too. Mr. Ferguson won the FTC job by courting the anti-big tech wing of the GPO. And he's been loud in proclaiming that he's not like Reagan-Bush era leaders. but the ambitious chair was right when he told CNBC if in his words I can't win in the court the FTC needs to get out of the way and let business innovate right for all Americans and Lena Khan didn't have any problems uh with going to court and losing she said as much that was her whole MO though we'll just put a freeze on things right even if we think we're gonna lose and it Tie you up in court. Long enough to where it doesn't make sense anymore because the markets move.

9:55Right. Good riddance. Cheese will be next. Still to come on Squawk Pod, more on Google and Whiz, a deal that became official during our TV broadcast. We will have the latest. And a key moment for the U.S. Federal Reserve, as the central bank meets while tariff policy is maybe clouding the view on the economy. Rockefeller Capital Management CEO Greg Fleming joins us. They are on hold, and they're going to need to be on hold now until they see what happens from the events that have been put in motion. Where will the tariffs end, and how much inflation does that cause? How much weakness do we have in the economy from the uncertainty?

10:41This is Squawk Pod. Three, two, one. His mic, cue. You're watching Squawk Box on CNBC. I'm Joe Kernan, along with Becky Quick. Andrew is off today. The Fed kicking off a two-day meeting. Join us now, Greg Fleming, Rockefeller Capital Management President and CEO. There are definitely some ratcheting down of GDP expectations, I think, goes along with your thinking as well for, I guess, a variety of reasons. You make an interesting point that the real inflation could come when we do onshore everything. And the labor and everything else that be careful what you wish. Although Scott Besson said, look, the American dream isn't a cheap widescreen TV.

11:25So maybe we pay more for that. But everyone's got a job to buy one, hopefully. Is there something to that? Well, one thing that Besson also said that I'm hoping he's still very focused on is three, three, and three. Three percent real growth, three percent inflation, and three percent federal deficit by 2028. Let's hope they're still on track for that. But, you know, one of the things about the Fed now, Joe, if we're talking about the Fed and that's partly the inflation topic, it's interesting that they are on hold and they're going to need to be on hold now until they see what happens from the events that have been put in motion.

12:00So where will the tariffs end and how much inflation does that cause? How much weakness do we have in the economy from the uncertainty, which you all are seeing every day, both business and consumer now? Now, some of the more recent polls on the consumer side show the consumers may be starting to pull back or that's in the early stages. So if you're the Fed now, you are truly data dependent with no ability really to move ahead of it because you don't know what the it is because it's a completely unique time. Meaning that there aren't going to be cuts that come anytime soon because they're waiting to see what happens.

12:32I'd be surprised if there were right, because they've got to worry about inflation has been on the right trajectory coming down, but there's still more work to be done there. if tariffs end up in a more robust spot and there's inflation from inflationary pressure there, you've got that on one side. And then how much does the economy weaken? You know, how much slack in the labor market, slack in the labor market, thank you, do we have? So they're going to be balancing those two things, but they've got to watch the data on both sides before I think they can move. So I would expect them to be on hold for some time here.

13:09To get the 3-3-3 seems like would cause a lot of near-term issues that if you want to get there, maybe you're okay with some of this. You also pointed out we had two big years. This is not unexpected, a 10 % correction probably. If it was caused by some of these, whatever you want to call them, tough love that we're getting, whether it's from Doge or whatever you want to look at, Are you in support of some of this stuff, even if it causes some near-term turmoil, tariffs even? Well, let me give one answer on the history, and then I'll come back to what I'm in support of. In 98 and 99, and we were here, you had the two best back-to-back years in history until 23-24.

14:04And they were roughly similar in terms of the magnitude. The market was up about 50 percent, a little more than over the two years. And that's what we had in 23, 24. So coming out of two years like that, you're going to see more volatility. This time, unlike that time, 2000 was the election year. Here you had the administration change. And whatever new administration comes in, there's going to be new policies. So you would expect to see more volatility in 2025 coming in just because of what happened the last couple of years and the new administration. So, again, that's something for people to keep in mind here.

14:35The other thing that people need to keep in mind is that the market in the last two years, if you take out the seven stocks that we spent so much time talking about, the market's up each of those two years about 9 % or 10%. And if you take those stocks out now, the market S &P is roughly flat. So, you know, there's been a lot of talk in the last few weeks about the major correction in the market and angst about the market, but there really isn't, when you look at the numbers, as much going on yet as people, I think, are talking about. So it's important to keep it in context. On the policy side, we've talked about this at length here.

15:09The federal budget deficit has got to be cut. And the statistic I've been talking about recently, if you go back to 1945, receipts as a percentage of GDP have averaged 17 % a year. Spending over that entire time frame has averaged 19 % a year. And we obviously had some years even with the surplus. Bill Clinton left office with the surplus. In the five-year period, 2019 to 2024, receipts were 17 % of GDP on average, and spending was 27 % of GDP. COVID. Completely unsustainable. We have a wealthy country. I still firmly believe greatest economy in the world and will be for a very long time. But we can't afford that level of deficit year in and year out.

16:00So they have got to go after that. whatever parties in power, they've got to go after that. So I'm hoping that they get there with some material reduction in the level of deficit spending that we have in this country. Right. I mean, I looked at it again, and Trump was under a trillion for the first three years, and then it was almost four trillion in the COVID year. So all in, it came at like seven. Then I think Biden did almost three or just under that. Up front, right when he came in on COVID. But then it came down below two. But then the last two or three years, we went right back up for no reason, other than everything the Democrats wanted.

16:43And think if it wasn't for Sinema and Manchin, it would have been 10 times worse. But all that stuff that happened got us back to$2 trillion in deficits. We were under$1 trillion. You cannot run on a sustainable basis, even if the United States, a deficit, particularly when employment's close to full, as it has been, of six to seven percent of GDP. You know, one of the transitions I think they're also trying to make now is all of that spending on the federal side. It's got to come down. And they're hoping to transition to faster growth on the private side. And that would be a great pivot if we can pull that off in the economy, a great pivot for us to have now.

17:24No question that spending has outpaced where it should be. But when you hear talk about cutting and coming up with savings from some of that spending and then turning around and giving it back in tax cuts, what do you think of it? Well, you know, the tax cuts, I mean, the pro-tax cut crowd. I'm not talking the 2017 return. I'm talking about additional tax cuts on top of that, not paying for tax for tips, not paying for overtime. A lot of things that have some pretty big price tickets on to the tune of billions of dollars. Becky, you're right. They've got to balance both sides. In the final analysis, when you put it all together, that deficit and, you know, and Bissent said it up front, 3 percent of GDP by 2028.

18:08They have got to figure out the balance that's going to get there. So I completely agree with you. If there's less on the spending side and you layer on additional tax cuts, even though tax cuts tend to be pro-growth and that's the argument for them, that's a problem because we have got to take this 6%, 7%, bring it and it should be 3 % by 2028. And it could come down further from there because you're now already servicing. And Joe and Becky, we've talked about this. The interest on the debt today exceeds military spending. And when you look in the world around us and the people you're talking to every day, military is quite important today given what's going on in the world.

18:45So we have to invest in the military, reinvent the military. We need the money for that. Spending more on interest on debt than military is, again, another national challenge. We're not talking about crazy interest rates at this point, below 5%. We're not. We're talking about more normalized interest rates. If we get enough weakness, maybe they come down. but they'll probably come down more like they have historically as opposed to what we saw, you know, four or five years ago. So the interest costs on this enormous federal debt are going to stay very high. Greg, thank you. These are intractable problems, but you're optimistic?

19:23I remain optimistic. I mean, it's still... What else have we got? It's also still the greatest economy in the world. No doubt. You know, the Economist had that cover story with American exceptionalism, the envy of the world, four or five, six months ago. You know, you have that cover story, Jinx and Sports Illustrated. So, you know, they put that out there. But, you know, there might be a little pushback on that now. But in the final analysis, this is a great economy, a great society. That's never changing. You might change the, you know, terrible, you know, the longest bull market in bonds. That's the top.

19:57But it's never going to be the top of American exceptionalism. I hope not. You and I are on the exact same page on that show. Becky, too. Great to see you both. Thank you. Next on Squawk Pod, two astronauts finally on their way home from space, thanks to private industry, a spacecraft rideshare courtesy of Elon Musk's SpaceX. What those astronauts have been through, and the creature comforts we miss as Earthlings, with astronaut Mike Massimino. On my first flight, I missed pizza so badly. I ordered pizza at the Cape, at the Kennedy Space Center. I thought you were going to say at the space station.

20:31I ordered there was a local pizza place. Domino's Deliverance up there. 30 minutes or less. Uber. Uber Eats. Plus. It is official. A quick update on a big tech story today. Google is buying cloud security company Whiz. We'll be right back.

20:54you're listening to squawk pod from cnbc freedom spacex on the big loop undog sequence commanded to crew nine safe journey home it's been the honor of a lifetime to cross your path up here on space station your service has been very much appreciated and uh we'll miss you but Have a great journey home. Here's Becky Quick. Astronauts Sonny Williams and Butch Wilmore are returning to Earth following an unexpected nine-month stay aboard the International Space Station. They're now in a capsule provided by Elon Musk's SpaceX rocket company. Joining us right now is former NASA astronaut Mike Massimino.

21:34And Mike, this has been kind of crazy to watch for us, thinking that you're going up for eight days, finding out that, no, it's going to be more like nine months before you come back. As a former astronaut, somebody who's been up there, what did you think about all of this? Well, Becky, I thought it's a pretty good example of the resiliency of both NASA and its astronauts, of the plan changing. You never know the way things are going to work out. You have to be ready for the unexpected. In this case, they were ready. They were ready to stay there longer if needed. That was always part of the backup plan.

22:11But you don't necessarily expect that's going to happen. I think the likelihood going in was very low that this was going to happen. But it did happen, and they were ready for it. Yeah, I guess I'm still kind of remembering and reflecting on the idea that the amazing situation of being able to be sent into space, the good news is you're coming back, not necessarily that you're coming back with a delay on some of these issues. But it has caused us to do some soul searching just about what this means for Boeing, what this means about the privatization of the space of the space program and all the outsourcing that NASA has done with this.

22:47How do you feel about it? Well, I think, you know, as far as Boeing goes, we haven't heard much about the Starliner spacecraft. I'm still hopeful that they'll be able to become more comfortable with the issues they saw and fly it again. I think that's that's the hope. I don't think the story is closed on that yet. So hopefully they'll continue to look at it and we schedule another flight with people on board. We'll see if that happens or not. It's been a few months now that it's been on the ground, but hopefully we'll get that flying again. As far as privatization goes, this is really what NASA has turned its attention to.

23:19Really going back to the space shuttle program, well before I was an astronaut, the hope was that commercialization would start back then at the beginning of the space shuttle program, the early 1980s. They were hoping to build commercial space stations. They were hoping that the space shuttle would be a commercial vehicle. Didn't turn out that way. They had a couple accidents. It never made it to where they wanted it to be for commercial purposes. But when the space shuttle retired, NASA took the opportunity to try to stimulate a commercial space business, both in flying cargo to space for the space station and also flying astronauts.

23:55And now we're seeing commercial missions to the moon. And NASA partakes in those. They helped fund those and they also put experiments on board. So I don't think this is going to end. It's been a very good relationship and good both for the economy, for a new space business and also for NASA for its goals. I'm grateful that there was a second option, that SpaceX was able to step in and step up to the plate. Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's good if, you know, you never know. And it could be issues with a SpaceX vehicle someday. The Soyuz, the Russian spacecraft, which has been a very reliable spacecraft, a couple years ago, Frank Rubio, another astronaut, was on board a Soyuz going to the space station.

24:36There was a leak in that Soyuz once they got there. They returned that Soyuz empty, sent up another Soyuz for Frank and his crew. They went from six months to over a year. So, you know, the thing is, the crew is never really in any danger. And their ride changed, but they always had a way to get home. They're coming back on the SpaceX vehicle that's been up there with them since the fall. So the safety has never been compromised. And I think it's a credit to NASA and to the team that they've been able to do that. Easy for you to say. Never really in danger. We've got lights here that could drop any time on me.

25:15I'm permanently scared. What was your longest time up there, Mike? Yeah, nothing like these guys, Joe. I was up there for my longest was 14 days. It was supposed to be 12, and we got extended for two days, but that was really gravy. I'm just trying to think when you get back. And, you know, yeah, I've never had any danger. This is like a walk in the cake, sure. But when you got back, I'm just trying to think about what it was. Was it fresh air? Was it the sky? Was it what was it that was the pizza? A toilet? Oh, I would hug my toes. You got gravity again. I don't have to. I don't even want to know the details of how you're doing that stuff up there.

25:56But what was the greatest thing about coming back? Would you say your loved ones? Oh, yeah, certainly. Certainly seeing your family, Joe. You know, even though I was gone just for a couple of weeks and with these guys, you know, they they've been up there a lot longer, of course. But seeing your family and seeing your friends, that is that is number one. And then the things you do miss on Earth. You know, I miss things like the weather and crowds. And it sounds crazy, but a lot of things we complain about, you don't have it up there. And you miss that. And you mentioned pizza. Yeah, on my first flight, I missed pizza so badly.