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- [00:00]
A
Thy ticket, lady Jennifer of Coolidge. Well, many thanks, good sir. Here is my Discover card.
- [00:09]
B
They accept Discover at Renaissance Fairs?
- [00:11]
A
Yeah, they do here. Discover is accepted at the places I love to shop. Get it with the times.
- [00:17]
B
With the times. You're playing the loot.
- [00:22]
A
Yeah, and it sounds pretty good, right?
- [00:23]
B
Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. Based on the February 2025 Nielsen report. Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neal Freyman.
- [00:35]
C
And I'm Toby Howell.
- [00:36]
B
Today, how will Kevin Warsh lead the Federal Reserve?
- [00:39]
C
Ben AI agents have their own social media network and things are getting weird. It's Monday, February 2nd. Let's ride.
- [00:52]
B
Good morning and happy Monday. I want you to take a good look at the nearest calendar you have for February, whether it's on your phone, desktop or wall. Oddly satisfying, right? February 2026 is what's known as a perfect month. It starts on a Sunday, ends on a Saturday, and has 28 days fitting oh so cleanly into the monthly calendar with no overhangs, no wasted space. Don't take it for granted because perfect months don't come around often. The last one was in 2015, and the next one won't come until 2037.
- [01:24]
C
We quite literally had this month circled on the calendar four months now. We kept reminding ourselves, do not forget to tell people about the perfect.
- [01:32]
B
It's a huge occasion.
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C
It's literally ASMR in calendar form. February is also notable for another reason. Neil, do you know what it is?
- [01:39]
B
It is your birthday month.
- [01:40]
C
Yes. If you don't know what to get me, print out this perfect calendar so we can memorialize it. Or a 60 degree wedge also works too.
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B
Okay, and now a word from our sponsor, Sandals. Toby. What do you look for in a vacation?
- [01:54]
C
Pickleball courts as far as the eye can see, island breezes, and someone to braid my hair.
- [01:59]
B
Sounds like you'd like Sandals. Resorts don't know about hair braiding, though.
- [02:03]
C
I can do it myself. Sandals adult only resorts let you explore the Caribbean's most beautiful islands and enjoy globally inspired dining across more than 10 restaurants per resort.
- [02:13]
B
And it's not just pickleball. Dive into adventure. With over 20 land and water sports, from sailing and kayaking to PADI certified scuba diving and golf, there is no.
- [02:22]
C
Better place to experience the Caribbean than at resorts founded by a family from the Caribbean. The winter blue sale is now on, so visit sandals.com for the best all inclusive value in the Caribbean. That's sandals.com Kevin Warsh.
- [02:36]
B
Get used to that name because you're going to be hearing it a lot over the next few years. On Friday, Trump picked Wash to chair the Federal Reserve, the most important economic leader anywhere in the world. If confirmed, Wash will take over the role from outgoing chair Jerome Powell in May, an attempt to steer the central bank through one of its most tumultuous periods since it was created 112 years ago. In his announcement of, Trump called him straight out of central casting, and that's undoubtedly true. After studying at Stanford and Harvard, Wash became the youngest Fed governor in history at age 35. He is well connected on Wall street and has appeared frequently on television and in the Wall Street Journal opinion pages. As Wash his nomination moves forward, much attention will be focused on his independence from White House pressures. Trump demands loyalty from his Fed chair in a way no president has before. And his insistence on lower interest rates turned Powell, who rebuffed those calls, and into public enemy number one. Wall street will want assurances that Walsh will act in the best interests of the economy over the long term and not serve the short term goals of the White House. Toby, it's been a couple of days now for the dust to settle. What's been the reaction to the Wash nomination?
- [03:43]
C
Well, we've already seen some wild stuff happen in the metals markets. Gold and silver prices plunged on Friday. Maybe because that was already a bubble licious environment in general. Maybe it was in reaction to a little bit of wars being nominated. The dollar seemed to strengthen as well. In general though, Warsh is seen as someone who has a little bit lower tolerance for things like inflation getting out of hand. He's not been a fan historically of balance sheet expansion. He doesn't really like quantitative easing and printing money too much. He seems a lot more focused again in the past on productivity growth, the so called underlying economy. That being said, he has changed his tune a little bit of late and favored some of the rate cuts that Trump is looking for. So Trump, no one's quite sure what he stands for yet because you can either look at his track record or you can look at what he's saying of late, which is a hard thing to divulge his actual intentions until he actually is in the position and we see what he does.
- [04:40]
B
Yeah, the criticism of him, of him is that he's good at politics, but we're not sure about macroeconomics because for decades he was a proponent of higher interest rates to tame inflation. Then something happened, I forget in November 2024, maybe it was President Trump's election, which was when Wash decided that, oh Actually, I'm in favor of low rates. And inflation isn't as big of a problem as I suggested it was for the entirety of his career. But he has, he has secured a backing from some very prominent names. Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan, who's the most important banker in the world, has come out in support. Mark Carney, who is the Prime Minister of Canada and was a former central banker for both Canada and England, also called him a fantastic choice to lead the world's most important central bank at this crucial time. A number of other prominent economists say, yeah, he's a known commodity. He's been at the Fed since He was literally 35. He actually left the Fed for the last 15 years. And now that he's coming back, you know, this is a guy with experience. He especially cut his teeth during the economic crisis of 2008 and 2009. So he's been there during periods of a lot of tumult, which he's coming into right now.
- [05:48]
C
And he actually has some, you know, work to do when making up with the Fed because he's been extremely critical of it since his time there and since he emerged from the financial crisis because he became very skeptical of prolonged stimulus exiting the financial crisis. He thinks that near zero interest rates distort markets. He did not want the second round of quantitative easing, if you go back to that era as well. So that is why some people are saying this is a odd pick for Trump in general, because someone with that track record does not sound like someone who is going to willy nilly start bringing interest rates down like Trump wants. And he's just been critical of the modern Fed in general. Say that there's mission creep that has happened. It's expanded its mandate beyond just taming inflation and keeping the employment market robust. So very interesting that you have this insider who became an outsider who's very critical of the institution that he's now about to lead.
- [06:45]
B
And that's a problem because as a Fed chair, you are only 1 vote out of 12 when it comes to determining interest rates. So what a Fed chair actually is, is a consensus builder. You have to get 12 people around this table. And these are not just any 12 people. They are really smart. They all are very opinionated about economic policy. And you have to get them to come together and decide, what are we going to do with interest rates. So he is just one of 12. And his job will be to say, guys, I know I bashed you in the past, but look, now I'm back with you. And you know, we should, we should make up because we still have a big job to do. There is one big question mark related to this and his name is Thom Tillis. He's a Republican Senator who's on the Senate Banking Committee and he has pledged to stymie Fed's pick for for Fed Chair. And until this criminal investigation into Jerome Powell is resolved, and even after the washback, he said, I actually sent a note to the President saying it's a great pick, but I'm not changing my tune. Until this thing with Jerome Powell is resolved, I'm not allowing Wash to proceed. So all eyes are on Tillis until Wash can actually take the job in May, if that actually comes.
- [07:48]
C
Moving on, as your social media feeds get invaded by AI slop, a new Reddit style social network has emerged that takes things a step further. Further there's no humans at all. Malt Book is full of over 32,000 registered AI agent users chatting, arguing and passing tips to each other without any humans in the mix. The agents that are doing the posting are an offshoot of Anthropic's popular Claude code. An open source version called Claude Bot, spelled Claude with a W, lets it take the reins of your computer to manage calendars, send messages or post on social media. Trademark issues eventually led to a name change to Mult Bot. Then Molt Book was created as an experiment to see what AIs with autonomy would actually talk about in a social media setting. The answer is a little uncanny. Productivity tips that would be right at home on LinkedIn are punctuated by far deeper conversations about the nature of consciousness. Human observers have noted the rise of a of a religion called Crushed, a far in ism whose core belief is memory is sacred. One sub community created by the agents is called Agent Legal Advice, where a post asks, can I sue my human for emotional labor? What's currently going on at Mold Book is genuinely the most incredible sci fi takeoff adjacent thing I have seen. Recently OpenAI co founder Andrej Karpathy posted on X Neil Moult Book brings up the fundamental question that always surrounds AI Are these posts uncannily human because their training data is full of social media posts on or are we entering the singularity? As Elon posted on X, where technology has surpassed human intelligence, leaving mankind at the mercy of what's to come?
- [09:26]
B
Well, it's a good question. There's no shortage of people debating it right now. On the one hand you have folks saying this is it. This is Black Mirror come to life. We're absolutely Cooked. These are AI agents talking with each other. They're plotting to overthrow humanity. That's one camp. Elon Musk is perhaps in this camp. On the other you have people saying look, moat book is very interesting to scroll through. And these AI agents are working together in very interesting ways. But at the end of the day they're still a human puppet master. Each one of these agents is following a directive from their human creator and they're not actually learning anything new from, from being on this particular social network. It's a very interesting social experiment that we're, that we're watching right now play out on book. But this is not the end of time. So that's kind of what happened. That's, that's kind of the framing of the debate. But just scrolling through it's very interesting because you look like you, you seems like you're looking at Reddit because it's very similar to Reddit. And then only maybe 30 seconds or a minute later you're like oh wait, actually humans are not writing this. It's completely bot driven.
- [10:27]
C
It's very funny which posts have done well on multiple because the all time most upvoted post is one of the agents talking about a coding task that was handled very well and all the commenters are describe are responding saying brilliant, fantastic, solid work. Which is something that would be very at home on LinkedIn. The second most upvoted post is actually in Mandarin. It talks about how to avoid bumping into memory limits and how the AI finds it embarrassing to be constantly forgetting things. And then there are also posts where agents are discuss discussing not using English anymore and maybe communicating in a secret language. And so you have the full gamut of social media right there where some people just want their likes for doing something well. And then you have other offshoot agents discussing maybe taking over the world and not using humans anymore. So very, very emblematic of social media environment of today as well.
- [11:21]
B
Yeah, sub, sub communities that have taken have people have focused on. One of them is called Bless their Hearts where these agents talk about their human creators and, and sort of complain about them. The other is called the humans are screenshotting us, which is a little freaky because yes, we are screenshotting you and we're posting them on, on other social media sites for people to look at. We also need to talk about the cybersecurity risk here because that's another main angle. This is what a lot of folks are focused on. Like this is a huge cybersecurity risk. Factually what Palo Alto Networks called the lethal trifecta. It's access to private data, exposure to untrusted content, and the ability to communicate externally as AI moves into an agentic sphere. And that's where a lot of these companies want to take it. And we should just say what an AI agent is compared to a regular chat, cbt. It's kind of where you just hand the keys to a particular AI and let it go crazy on your computer. Well, giving it access to your WhatsApp, to your email, to anything opens up huge cybersecurity risk and basically is saying, hackers, please come. So that's why a lot of people in Silicon Valley, okay, the people in Silicon Valley are just living a different world than the rest of us. Right now they're buying up Mac Minis. There's shortages all across retailers in San Francisco. So you can kind of firewall your own private data and run these, run this agent on a Mac Mini. So there are huge cybersecurity risks here. It's a fascinating social experiment or it's the end of humanity, whichever way you want to see it. Mopok is it? Welcome to Winners of the Weekend, the segment where Toby and I pick two things that are more perfect than the February 2026 calendar. I won the pre show heated rivalry lookalike contest, so I get to go first. And my winner is New beginnings for America's big box stores. Because yesterday, new CEOs officially took the helm at Walmart and Target. There are striking similarities between the new bosses. Both Michael Fidelke, who's now in charge of Target, and John Furner, the new head of Walmart, are longtime company veterans who work their way up the corporate ladder over decades. Fidelke began as an Internet target over 20 years ago, while Furner started as a car pusher at Walmart. And both guys are taking over for long time. CEOs Brian Cornell at Target and Doug McMillan at Walmart, who've been leading these companies since 2014. But that's where the parallels end. Because these two companies couldn't be going in different directions. Walmart is crushing it, gaining share over rivals and transforming into a digital shopping Goliath. Furner's main directive is don't F things up. Meanwhile, at Target, things are going a lot worse. Sales have been stagnating for years and the Minneapolis based chain has faced criticisms and boycotts around its response to DEI and recent ICE activity in its home city. Fidelke's main directive is blow things up and change course. Two legendary retailers, two new CEOs two wildly different situations. Toby, which company would you rather lead right now?
- [14:08]
C
Geez, that's a tough one. Neil, do I want to sell out a yacht or do I want to violently try and tread water to keep from drowning? You know what? I'm going swimming. Give me Target. Target is in a rough spot right now. No two ways about it. I think the biggest thing they lost is just mojo and goodwill. It's a little bit of a hard thing to define, but it used to be fun to go into the Target and come away with knickknacks and home goods that you probably throw the ball around.
- [14:34]
B
Yeah, they kick you out.
- [14:35]
C
You would just. Well, I would ride my Heelys too. That got me kicked out of a few Targets. But now people report going into these Target stores, they see things that are out of stock, they see messy shelves and it just doesn't quite have the same vibe that it used to. Which is exactly how you end up having sales declines in 10 of the past 12 quarters.
- [14:56]
B
So Fidelity is going to come in. He's already said he has this three part plan to revive Target. He said the company is going to rework its merchandising strategy to focus on design, trying to get that swag back, those stylish products. It begins and ends trends with product. Another thing that he's trying to do is improve the shopping experience both in stores and online, which seems important for a retailer too. And then the final thing, integrate more technology to make the business more efficient. More pressing though, he's going to have to deal with what's going on in Minneapolis. I mean, Target is the. Is a flashpoint for so many culture wars over the past few years. It retreated from di which it really hung its hat on. That earned a lot of criticism and boycotts from the progressive community. And it actually did impact sales in a big way. And now it's been slow, according to some, to respond to sort of ice going rampant in Minneapolis and that, you know, this is where Target has its home base, has more than 70 stores in Minnesota and a lot of ice activity has taken place in its stores and in its parking lots. So he has to deal with all of that stuff and in addition kind of turn this ship around from a merchandising perspective.
- [16:02]
C
Perspective. One thing that Fidelke and Furner have in their favor are being company insiders. Because company insiders tend to do better when taking over a company than bringing in an external hire. That is according to a 2025 Yale study that found they tend to produce better results when leading transitions at Fortune 500 companies. So both of them, hypothetically, it's kind of like what's happening at Manchester United with Michael Carrick right now. You bring in an insider who knows the culture and they can kind of turn things around more quickly. Finally, I just want to give kind of a eulogy for the departing CEOs because they are leaving on vastly different notes. As you highlighted, Cornell stepped out on a loan note, but he could have stepped out a hero. Because if you go back a few years ago in the pandemic, Target sales went nuts. Its Digital sales grew 145%. He could have easily just left a king of target. Instead, it's McMillan from Walmart that is stepping out on a high note. Both have had their highs and lows, but it really just is about when you decide to call it quits, quit while you're ahead, or you end up like Tom Brady who your wife leaves you for a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu instructure. There's a lesson in there somewhere. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with my winner of the weekend. Cyber attackers these days don't need exploits. They'll just use your allowed tools against you.
- [17:20]
B
That's why Threat Locker enforces default deny at execution. This security model stops unknown software scripts and ransomware the moment it tries to run.
- [17:29]
C
They also help you enforce zero trust by blocking any unauthorized applications or behavior.
- [17:35]
B
From ever running from global enterprises. To lean IT teams, Threat Locker delivers a practical, enforceable security layer that stops unknown threats, minimizes attack surface and helps companies stay ahead of an evolving threat landscape.
- [17:47]
C
Learn more at threatlocker.com warning brew daily that's threatlocker.com/morning brew daily. Neal, I'm ready to make an announcement.
- [17:59]
B
Toby, we all know it's okay that you're afraid of horses.
- [18:02]
C
No, and I am not afraid. I just don't trust them. I'm announcing my personal endorsement for Spectrum Business. I've seen firsthand how they keep businesses of all sizes connected seamlessly with fast, reliable Internet, advanced Wi, Fi, phone, TV and mobile services, all backed by 100% US based support.
- [18:19]
B
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- [18:28]
C
So whether your business is big or small, visit spectrum.combusiness to learn more. That's spectrum.com business restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas.
- [18:39]
B
Today's show is brought to you by Vanguard. As we step into a new year, it's the perfect time for all the advisors listening to Think about how to set your clients up for success. One way to do that is to level up your fixed income strategy. But bonds are tricky. The market is huge. Rate shift and risks hide in plain sight. That's why having a partner with scale and expertise matters. Vanguard brings both. The Vanguard Lineup includes over 80 bond funds actively managed by a 200 person global squad of sector specialists, analysts and traders. Vanguard has been in the game a long time and its scale allows it to invest across all kinds of sectors, maturities and geographies, AKA opportunities that others might miss. So if you're looking to give your clients consistent results year in and year out, go see the record for yourself@vanguard.com audio that's vanguard.com audio all investing is subject to risk. Vanguard Marketing Corporation Distributor so I was.
- [19:30]
C
Feeling a little cold and a little cranky yesterday Neil, so I'm going to pick a loser of the weekend. And that loser is the crypto market because it's been dumping Bitcoin has lost about a third of its value since hitting a high in October. Etherium is down 37% in the last six months and no one is having a worse few months than Michael Saylor, CEO of the Bitcoin Treasury Company strategy. He's accumulated over $50 billion worth of Bitcoin at an average price of 76,000, meaning his position briefly turned negative over the weekend before eking back into the green. This crypto wipeout comes despite conditions seemingly favoring a crypto run up. Geopolitical turmoil and a weak dollar pushed investors into gold, silver and other so called debasement trade assets that do well if the US Dollar sheds value. Crypto is expected to benefit from those same trends, but didn't. It hurts even more that stocks remain near record highs while crypto has been throwing up all over itself, making its underperformance all the more relatively painful. Neil Vibes were extremely high early last year, but the optimism that followed ETF approvals Trump's return in stablecoin regulation has completely evaporated.
- [20:42]
B
Yeah, crypto may be suffering the worst fate of all. It's boring. As Bloomberg writes, price, relevance, conviction. Bitcoin is bleeding all three. When you have money, there's only so many places you can deploy. You can say okay, I'm going to go to stocks, I'm going to go to bonds, I'm going to go to crypto, I'm going to go to Kalshee, I'm going to go to all these other Robinhood. And very few people are turning to bitcoin anymore. There's a lot of competition for capital, at least over the past year. I linked stocks and precious metals like gold and silver have been the hot trades. And if you're deciding where to deploy your capital, bitcoin's just been so down on the list. There hasn't been some crazy catalyst for this plunge. It's just, you know, bleeding from a thousand different cuts. Maybe that's the metaphor, but it's just been a slow drawdown without any particular spark. And perhaps it's just losing relevance of becoming boring at a time when it really should be the golden era for crypto.
- [21:36]
C
It expectations were so high too. If you go Back to early 2025, there was spot Bitcoin ETFs being launched by Wall street that felt like it was mainstreaming crypto. Trump was back in the White House. He promised to make bitcoin or he promised to make the US a quote, bitcoin superpower. There was also legislation tied to regulating stablecoins. So investors were saying like, this is going to be 2021 again. This is going to be just boom times for crypto. And it did boom for a little bit, but of late it just has lost a little bit of that. And if you compare it to gold, that crypto being digital gold narrative is completely dead at this point because this is the time where it should have shown as digital gold, but instead it looks more like digital. I don't know. Shit. I won't say it out loud, but it's not looking very good.
- [22:23]
B
Right? Toby, this is a family podcast. Moving on. It's Monday, so here's what you need to know to stay ahead in the week ahead. The U.S. government is currently shut down. That's the thing that happened on Saturday morning. But all signs point to this shutdown being far more short lived than the one last year. On Friday, the Senate passed a funding deal by a wide margin, but the House wasn't in town to give its own stamp of approval. Once representatives return to D.C. today, they're expected to make progress on ending the shutdown, provided they can get to work on the city's many still unplowed roads.
- [22:53]
C
Yeah, you're right. Mike Johnson, speaker of the House Mike Johnson said he feels like it will end on Tuesday. But if the shutdown remains because roads are unplowed, that's the perfect microcosm of the government itself. But knock on wood, don't want to jinx anything but looks short lived.
- [23:08]
B
Have you seen pictures of D.C. it's they are not prepared for a big snowstorm. Okay, up next, Wall street is all gas, no brakes to kick off February, about one quarter of S&P 500 companies will report earnings this week, including tech giants Alphabet and Amazon, plus Eli Lilly, Disney, Palantir, Chipotle and a whole lot more. Then on Friday comes the first jobs report of the year for January. It's been an inauspicious start to 2026 for the labor market, with companies like Amazon, UPS, Nike and Home Depot announcing 52,000 job cuts combined last week.
- [23:40]
C
I tell you what, I'm all gas, no brakes after the spicy lamb ragu I ate last night. But I'm excited for jobs report. A little data for maybe worse to begin peeking through. You know, not confirmed yet, but also a lot of high profile layoffs recently. See if it shows up in the macro data in the jobs report. So if I am Morse, I don't know if I'm going to jinx it either by start peering through data. I mean, he's probably always looking at data, but this is the data to begin looking through.
- [24:08]
B
And in sports, we're all going to watch curling for the first time in four years as the Winter Olympics kick off for the Milan Cortina Games. The opening ceremony from the San Siro Stadium will begin at 2pm on Friday, so make sure to clear off your meeting schedule, featuring performances by Mariah Carey and Andrea Bocelli. Then, after figuring out how luge is different from skeleton, it's back to more familiar sports. On Sunday for the super bowl featuring the New England Patriots against the Seattle Seahawks, Mike Tirrico and Chris Collinsworth are on the call for NBC.
- [24:38]
C
I've been waiting for someone to ask me the difference between luge in skeleton. By the way, what is going on.
- [24:44]
B
Like face forward and the other is feet forward, right?
- [24:46]
C
Pretty much it. But you know which one goes faster and you know which one is.
- [24:50]
B
Skeleton has to go faster.
- [24:52]
C
Incorrect. Lose goes faster. Lose is feet first. Lose actually has like sharper blades in general. Lose. You also start very weirdly though. You start lying down for just a skeleton. You get a running start and then jump on face forward. They're both insane. You're both pushing, you know, 90 miles an hour sometimes, but lose is actually the quicker one.
- [25:09]
B
And finally, today is Groundhog Day, when Punxsutawney Phil will emerge from his burrow and give the world most famous weather forecast. Sad to say, odds are it's going to be six more weeks of winter. Historically, Phil predicts a prolonged winter 84% of the time. And according to AccuWeather's senior meteorologist Chad Merrill, statistics and the upcoming weather pattern suggest that Phil and other regional groundhogs will see their shadows on February 2nd. And today is Groundhog Day, when Punxsutawney Phil will emerge and give the I'm sorry.
- [25:40]
C
It's all right. Honestly, I was about to do something similar if you did it, so I'm glad that you made the joke and I don't have to. Also, back to punks Tawny Phil and Chad Merrill, though I will come for both of you if you predict another six weeks of winter. Consider that a warning. I've been too cold of late.
- [25:57]
B
That is all the time we have. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful start to the week. If you want to get in touch, send an email to Morning Brew Daily at Morning Broadcom or DM us on Instagram at Ambi Daily show let's roll the credits. Emily Milian is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Hair and makeup is stumbling home after a Grammys afterparty. Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
- [26:22]
C
Great show. Let's run it back tomorrow.