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The Burger CEOs Are Beefing
00:40:45
The U.S. started a war in Iran, Pete Hegseth is feuding with Anthropic, and the McDonald's CEO went viral for his tiny bite of burger.
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- [00:09]
A
Hello and welcome to Sleep Money, your guide to the business and finance news of the week. I'm Felix Salmon of Bloomberg. I'm here with Emily Peck of Axios.
- [00:21]
B
Hello.
- [00:22]
C
Hello.
- [00:22]
A
I'm here with Elizabeth Spires of the New York Times.
- [00:25]
B
Hello.
- [00:26]
A
And we have a busy news week this week. There is a war going on and we are going to talk about it. We're going to talk about the effect on the oil markets, on the dollar, on the status of Dubai as a financial center. We are going to talk about the way that all war is AI now. And there's a big fight going on. Not a war, but a fight going on between the Department of War and Anthropic, the main provider of its AI systems. We are going to mostly, however, talk about the really important news of the week that involves 1,760 grams of sodium. It is terrifying, but it's also fun. So stay tuned. It's all coming up on Sleep Money. This message is a paid partnership with Apple Card, my favorite travel hack Easy it's using Apple Card. It's great knowing that every time I dine out, buy souvenirs or pay my hotel bill using my Apple Card, I'm actually earning up to 3% daily cash back. So if you're like me and love to travel, then apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app today, subject to credit approval. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch terms and more at applecard.com slate money is brought
- [01:49]
C
to you by Charles Schwab. Decisions made in Washington can affect your portfolio every day, but what policy changes should investors be watching? Listen to Washington Wise, an original podcast for investors from Charles Schwab. To hear the stories making news in Washington right now, host Mike Townsend, Charles Schwab's managing director for legislative and regulatory affairs, takes a nonpartisan look at the stories that matter most to investors, including policy initiatives for retirement, savings, taxes and trade, inflation concerns, the Federal Reserve, and how regulatory developments can affect companies, sectors and even the entire market. Mike and his guests offer their perspective on how policy changes could affect what you do with your portfolio. Download the latest episode and follow@schwab.com WashingtonWise or wherever you listen.
- [02:44]
A
I feel like this is the week. If there's ever a week when we need to talk about the Strait of Hormuz and its importance to global oil markets, which is a conversation we could have had at literally any point in my career or even like my parents careers. This has been a known issue in global oil markets for what, 75 years something like that. The Strait of Hormuz, if you look at not just oil, but now LNG gas as well from Qatar, all of this shit comes through this tiny little gap connecting the Persian Gulf to the rest of the world. And if the oil can't get through that tiny little gap, then, well, Emily, what happens?
- [03:24]
C
The price of oil goes up, up, up, up, up, which has been happening since Trump started this war just a week ago. The price of oil has spiked.
- [03:31]
A
And is that just purely a sort of supply and demand thing? That the demand for oil is more or less unchanged, but the supply has gone? There isn't oil coming through the Strait of Four Moose. And one of the reasons I should say why it's not coming through the Strait of Four moves. It's not just the oil tankers are too scared to do it because they'll get blown up by Iranian missiles. It's also that Saudi Arabia has closed its two big pipelines which refill those oil tankers. So there's no point in even going into the Gulf, because if you do, there's no oil there right now to be refilled.
- [04:05]
C
Yeah, I think that's a really good question. And I think the spike is pricing in the supply shock a little bit before the supply shock happens, because this is moving so fast. We haven't seen the full brunt of the price spike yet because it's still days and people have supplies, but things are going to get backed up, if you follow.
- [04:23]
A
Yeah, I think the thing that people have demand for is like, nice refined oil, not crude oil. And the Strait de Hormuz is more a place where you see crude oil. So eventually the crude oil will stop making its way ways of the refineries. The refineries will have less output and, you know, eventually we'll reach the point at which I need to fill up my F150, and I don't know how to do that. But we're not at that point yet. And in fact, correct me if I'm wrong, but like here in North America, we'll probably never reach that point because America is a net oil exporter for refined oil. The oil we refine, if it isn't produced domestically, comes mostly from places like Venezuela and places in our hemisphere from Canada. So we're not directly in that sort of supply chain.
- [05:09]
B
I have two questions, though. First of all, does Trump really understand that? Because he's perpetually mentally stuck in the 80s, and when he went into Venezuela to swipe Maduro, he said, we're going to get all the oil there. So it's unclear whether he fully has internalized that. We are energy independent now, and it's not 1988, but I think.
- [05:28]
A
I think he does understand that.
- [05:29]
C
Yeah, well, we're not. I mean, we are energy independent and we probably won't have an oil shock like we had I wrote about this week back in, like, the late 1970s. We are fine, but oil trades on a global market. And with the shock that we're seeing now with Hormuz, which I guess 20% of the world's oil or something travels through, prices are going to go up and they will even affect prices here in the US you saw gas prices already increase a little bit this week. And we don't have to go back. Yeah, and we don't have to go back far to understand what this means, because we remember 2022 when there was the last time there was an oil shock when Russia invaded Ukraine.
- [06:07]
A
That was more of a gas shock.
- [06:08]
C
But, yeah, it was a gas shock. And energy prices went up and we saw gas prices in the US Go up. We weren't, like, affected the way Europe was. And you mentioned LNG liquefied natural gas, Felix, and, like, that's where we really shine, I think. And we're really in the US Protected against what's happening now in the Middle East. We had a really good chart this week, I thought, in Axios from my colleague Amy Harder, which showed LNG prices in Europe and Asia have gone up, up, up, and, like, are on the high part of the chart. And the low part of the chart is LNG prices in the US because we have our own supply.
- [06:43]
A
We're not. So in that sense, I think, Elizabeth, the answer to your question is. Yeah, like, in a weird way, I think Trump probably does understand, or if he doesn't understand, it doesn't matter, because it's good for him that the externalities inherent in starting a war with Iran fall largely in what we finance folks called the EMEA area. Europe, Middle East, Africa, and not in the Americas. And so he's like, well, yeah, if Danish natural gas prices spike, which they have done, that's just like an ancillary benefit. Because it, you know, he doesn't like the Danes because they want Greenland.
- [07:19]
C
But again, like, Americans, and my gosh, did we talk about it so many times in 22. But Americans, they see those gas prices on those big billboards on the roads, and, like, we don't tolerate that stuff. Like, even if things move a dollar, $2 a gallon, people be pretty pissed Coming into the midterms.
- [07:35]
A
Yeah, yeah, I do. One of the things I really hate about American English is the way that the word gas has two very separate meanings. And like, in this particular conversation, it's actually important to be able to distinguish between natural gas and gasoline.
- [07:51]
C
Yes.
- [07:52]
A
But I'm never going to be able, like, just call it petrol. Okay.
- [07:55]
C
Petrol. Yes. When petrol prices soar in the US And Americans get GR. Angry, that's going to be bad for the politics. Even though Trump doing this now, the timing was pretty good, if you read all the commentary. Oil supply was, like, pretty, pretty great coming in. Prices were pretty low coming into this. The US Is much more energy independent than it was at any other time we've had beef with Iran. Like, this was a good time to start the war. I don't know if I really mean that, but do you know what I mean from an oil market perspective or an energy market?
- [08:28]
A
Yeah. And petrol prices in the US are within the range of normal still.
- [08:35]
C
They were pretty low coming in.
- [08:37]
A
They were pretty low. And so now they're back up to levels that we have all become relatively accustomed to over the past few years.
- [08:44]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [08:44]
B
Well, besides the petrol prices, Trump also wants, wants a weaker dollar, and this is having the opposite effect.
- [08:52]
A
I think, again, to Emily's point, the dollar was already very weak when he started this war, and it has strengthened a bit since the war started, for reasons that Emily can explain, but again, not so much as to worry anyone. It's still weak by recent history standards. Emily, can you explain why a war strengthens the dollar?
- [09:11]
C
I don't know.
- [09:12]
A
I mean, you did it in your newsletter, so.
- [09:15]
C
Okay. Yeah, I can actually. Okay, so coming into this war, for the past, like, year and a half, international stock markets have been doing really well, which we've already discussed on Slate Money. And US Investors really like investing in stocks. And for the past year and a half, they've been taking their dollars and investing them in international stock markets. The South Korean stock market, the kospi, is up overall.
- [09:38]
A
Oh, my God, that's up again. Like, crazy.
- [09:40]
C
It's crazy times. 100%.
- [09:42]
A
Crazy times in Korea.
- [09:44]
C
Crazy times in Korea. Over 100%. Everyone shares these charts showing international stock markets just doing lots better than the U.S. but when a shock happens in the economy, U.S. investors, typically, the pattern is they're like, oh, no. And they sell out of the international stock markets and they sell out into dollars. So there's all of a sudden there's like, more demand for dollars. And when demand goes up, the Price goes up, so the dollar strengthens is how I explained it in my story.
- [10:13]
A
Yeah, this whole question of how everyone is comfortable with their own home risk is something that I was talking about this week with the Bloomberg Pursuits team in the context of travel as well. So there's been a lot of talk about enormous numbers of people, quote, unquote, stranded or quote unquote, trying to get out of Gulf states and particularly uae. And there's like, you know, half a million Americans are stuck in the UAE or something and need to get out. They don't need to get out. They were happily living there before and they're still living there now. It's not obvious how many of them want to get out, but there's this sort of assumption among a bunch of US based observers that of course they would want to get out and that somewhere like Dubai is a very dangerous place to be right now and therefore you need to get out. I think statistically speaking, Dubai is a large city. It has, I think three people have died in Dubai this week, which is a lot of people. But by the standards of, like, people dying in major cities, American cities are still more dangerous than that.
- [11:19]
C
Yeah, but as soon as you're getting like text messages from the government that's like, don't move, bombs coming. And then it's like, okay, you can move again, bomb's gone. Like, as soon as I'm getting those messages as a, as an American, I'm like, bye.
- [11:33]
B
Well, also, there's a kind of like, how do you escape that sort of risk when a lot of the people being injured are being injured by like falling debris, not directly getting hit by a bomb or anything, but if you've been walking around Dubai for a year, not worried about that at all, it does create, I think, especially for the more recent expats, this sort of influx of people who've gone there over the last two or three years, kind of panicky stake, because first of all, the more recent influx of expats are not that accustomed to being expats anywhere. And so I think they're more skittish. And those are the people you keep seeing in interviews who are like, I just moved here, I thought it was safe.
- [12:08]
A
Yeah, and it was safe and it was great. And one of the interesting open questions right now is the question to which UAE and Qatar in particular have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in making their cities, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, incredibly safe, incredibly attractive places to live. And that worked until it didn't. And the open question is like, you Know, there have been attacks on these cities before. Is this going to be like a little blip which lasts for a couple of weeks and then people go back to where it was? Or is this going to fundamentally change the risk calculus of the professional classes who run these cities and those people are just not going to want to live there anymore? And I think I tend towards the latter. The Dubai is still going to be a financial center. The attraction of Dubai as a place to live and make lots of money and not pay any taxes, and all the rest of it is going to remain. And once this whole thing is over, which is probably going to be a matter of weeks, we will go back to something very closely approximating the status quo ante. One of the reasons I say this is because I've seen what's happened in Hong Kong, which also had a major shock in terms of the freedoms that people have in that city. And a lot of people like protested in the streets and talked about leaving and actually left. But the status of the city is like a safe and vibrant and rich financial center. Has not really changed. I suspect we're going to be okay. But this is definitely worrying for these Gulf states. And you can see now the way in which their investment in their defenses is paying off. Right. They're shooting down 99% of the missiles being aimed at them. And that is, that's working out for them. That's good for them.
- [13:54]
B
I think that's good. But you also, if you were a resident of Dubai, you would be like, this is a problem that we haven't had recently. There was a family office guy who's based in Dubai who had a quote like something like geography is the original risk model. And on that basis, if you've suddenly adjusted your perception of risk of being in Dubai, I think that does have longer term consequences.
- [14:14]
A
So the question I would have for you, Elizabeth, is if you are family office guy and you have rerated your mental risk model of where to live, where do you now think is safer than Dubai?
- [14:27]
B
I mean, New Zealand doesn't have the
- [14:29]
A
financial infrastructure it needs to be a financial hub. London, definitely not London.
- [14:34]
B
I mean, if your risk adjustment is just about where might I get hit by a missile? There are plenty of places.
- [14:40]
A
But it's not, is it? That's my point.
- [14:42]
C
I'm not sure who I agree with of the YouTube, but I am thinking about September 11, 2001.
- [14:48]
A
Exactly.
- [14:49]
C
Actually, I'm thinking about February 2002 because that's when I moved to downtown Manhattan because rents were crazy cheap because no one wanted to live there. And I got a great deal on a studio. And by the next year, like my rent went up and up and up and up and up.
- [15:04]
A
I was renting and I was like, this would be a great time to buy a place in Tribeca for sure. And so I started looking and the prices didn't come down at all. Like, rents came down, but prices did not come down. Because everyone kind of understood this on some level.
- [15:16]
C
Yeah.
- [15:16]
B
Do we think New York and Dubai are really comparable though?
- [15:19]
A
So the point is though, that like financial centers get attacked. Right. New York got attacked on 9 11, London got attacked on 7 7. Paris has all manner of shit happening all the time. Like Hong Kong we've talked about. Dubai is going through something right now. There is nowhere that is free of any kind of safety risk. Somewhere like London, the safety risk is like low level and constant, or even New York for that matter. In the way that, you know, Dubai, where people leave their homes and their cars unlocked and there's no theft and there's no muggings and there's no homicides, is much, much safer on a whole bunch of like non bomb related risk metrics.
- [15:56]
B
I'm not saying it's rational, but I do think that people do perceive risk around things like bombs differently than they do protests and.
- [16:04]
A
Oh, for sure. And that was exactly my point. Right. Which is going back to Emily's point about Americans suddenly saying, oh, foreign markets are riskier than American markets. The risk you're comfortable with is the risk you've grown up with. I think part of the reason that I think the way I do about this is because I grew up in London in the 80s where bomb risk was constant and we had the IRA letting off bombs on a semi regular basis. And so you got used to bomb risk. And so for me, bomb risk is much less scary because it's something I've lived with for many years than for someone who's just arrived in Dubai and who's never lived with bomb risk. I think we're all really agreeing on this, that these kind of risk calculations are weirdly idiosyncratic and actually national. And so one of the reasons why the dollar is strengthening is precisely because Americans have these idiosyncratic risk calculations and go, ooh, at a time like this, I think what I want to do really is be back in the safety of the US stock market, even if it's much more highly valued than foreign markets.
- [17:04]
C
Yeah, hold on tight to your dollars for safety. I guess.
- [17:20]
A
Slate money is brought to you by Apple Card. Hey, you could be earning 2% daily cash back on that purchase and that one and even that one. That's because Apple card users earn 2% daily cash back on every purchase, including everyday items you buy online or in store when using their Apple Card. With Apple Pay, not an Apple Card customer, you can apply in the Wallet app on iPhone subject to credit approval. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch Terms and more at Apple Code Slash Benefits. Slate Money is sponsored this week by upwork. Scaling a business takes the right expertise at the right time. Upwork helps growing teams quickly bring in specialized freelancers so you can move faster and take your business to the next level. Hiring help shouldn't be a headache and it shouldn't be a drain on your budget. Upwork makes it easy to hire specialized freelancers quickly so you get the expertise you need. Now upwork is a one stop platform that allows you to find, hire and pay expert freelancers across web and software development, data and analytics, marketing, business operations and more. With Business plus, you can access the top 1% of talent on Upwork, and with AI powered shortlisting, you'll get matched to the right freelancer in under six hours. Thousands of growing businesses already trust upwork to hire flexible, high quality freelance talent for everything from one off projects to ongoing support. It's free to sign up and posting a job is easy. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That is Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's up. W o r k.com Upwork.com. Ayoa Kimwlere here from the Athletic FC Podcast Ever feel your workload is out of control? Like you're wearing every hat and you're expected to be everywhere at once? Running a business means juggling books, payments, leads, payroll, basically everything. But with Intuit QuickBooks, your workload gets unloaded. QuickBooks gives you access to Intuit's powerful AI agents and trusted experts. They work together to handle the tedious stuff so you can get back to what actually grows your business. And because everything streamlined on one platform, your customer management, accounting, expenses and payroll all work seamlessly in just one place. So go ahead, outdo it with Intuit QuickBooks and get 50% off QuickBooks online for three months. Terms and conditions apply. Feature availability may vary by product. Visit QuickBooks.com for details. We should also talk about the thing that we promised that we would talk about last week, which is AI and its role in the attacks and the Department of War which is running the attacks and where Claude, which is the main product of Anthropic, is deeply integrated into the Department of War and has been central to planning all of these missiles that have been raining down on Iran. Right as that is happening, suddenly there's this dumb argument between Pete Hegseth and Dario Amadei and Emily, explain what happened. Where are we?
- [21:06]
C
Dario Amadei, who is the CEO of Anthropic, which makes Claude, which is embedded in the war apparatus of the United States and was apparently pivotal in the Venezuela operation and now in the Iran war. The Department of War is mad at Anthropic for reasons of that it is woke because it doesn't want AI to be used to autonomously kill people and it doesn't want AI to be used to spy on American which by the
- [21:35]
A
way the Department of War also says that it doesn't want those things either and would never do those things. It just doesn't want to be told not to do those things.
- [21:43]
C
So anyways, they had like a fight. Trump did what he does, which is take to wherever social media to say he doesn't want them involved in the US government anymore. And then Department of War said, we're going to designate you. What is it? A hostile frenemy or whatever and a supply chain risk.
- [22:00]
B
Supply chain risk, thank you.
- [22:01]
C
Supply chain risk.
- [22:02]
A
Hostile frenemy would be a much better designation.
- [22:05]
C
Official frenemy of the United States. And then they've been going back and forth about this and then Amodi, he apparently he writes things in the internal slack or wherever they write things at Anthropic.
- [22:18]
A
And he, he's like I didn't kiss up enough to the dictator. Not a good look, not a good look. Don't put that in a slack that gets leaked.
- [22:26]
C
And then so the last, now as we're taping on Friday, he is saying. Sorry I said that. You said it was a memo in the media, but it was more just like my free flowing thoughts and I want to be like need some training as a CEO. You can't do that. Everybody knows anyways, that's where we are. They have designated Anthropic some kind of risk, but it's not fully clear to me. Maybe one of you can explain it.
- [22:50]
A
Yeah, it's not the full on like there was a bit of fear, but when we were recording last week there was a bit of fear that this designation would basically force any company that deals with the US government from not using Claude at all for anything. And that definitely didn't happen. There was a bunch of sort of opportunistic positioning, especially by OpenAI, but also by XAI, to sort of Sam Altman and Elon Musk saying, well, you don't need Claude, you can just use us instead. And Pete Hexa is going, yeah, we'll use you instead. But it's, you know, as we all know, much harder than that when you're trying, when you're deeply integrated into a system as huge and complex as the Pentagon. So now Anthropic is back in talks and they'll probably be a bit of ritual groveling. And my expectation is that this six month divestment of the Department of War of Claude is not going to happen. And they're going to keep on using Claude because this is what they know how to do. And trying to replace it at this point would just be not worth it.
- [23:48]
B
I agree with you that they're not going to divest, but I don't think that this is a nothing burger as much as I think you two do, because I do think there are big cultural differences between OpenAI and anthropic and big differences between leadership there. Altman and Amadei are two very different leaders, you know, and I'm not going to go so far as to say that Anthropic is Woke, because it's not. Although Trump called them an out of control, radical leftist AI company.
- [24:16]
A
So a little bit of history here. Anthropic is a bunch of people who left OpenAI because, to oversimplify massively, they reckoned that OpenAI wasn't woken up. They were worried about the safety implications of various decisions that Sam Altman had made. So I think it is fair to paint Anthropic as being on the woke side of relatively relative. They are, yeah.
- [24:41]
B
They have a history of being a lot more transparent about the problems with their model. A lot of the sort of horror stories that you've heard about AI models in the last year were things that Anthropic put out their own public research and OpenAI has far less transparency about what's happening there. And I do think that's an Altman thing. So Altman turned around and immediately swooped in and said, we'll take those contracts if Anthropic doesn't want them. And then Amadei accused Altman of just gaslighting everybody and suggesting that they were being reasonable and Anthropic wasn't. And at one point Amade said something like, you know, I feel like the gaslighting is working on Twitter morons. But I worry if it's working on OpenAI employees, I don't believe that they're identical situations. I do believe that the wording in the contracts does make a difference. And I think that difference is Altman doesn't really care if eventually the government kind of breaks the law that they're saying that they're going to stick to. And I think Amadei doesn't trust them to do that, doesn't trust EXETH or any of the Department of War people to not use the models for those specific purposes.
- [25:44]
A
You agreed with me that the Pentagon is not going to divest itself of Claude.
- [25:50]
B
But I think for pragmatic reasons, I don't think that they can unwind Claude. Claude was the only model.
- [25:55]
A
Exactly. We're in agreement on that, that this is purely pragmatic. Right. This, the ideology is a bunch of noise happening on social media. But there's no one more pragmatic than the general. Pete Hexseth is not a general. Right. But he is running a department of Generals. He is running a department that really understands that all of war is logistics and all of war is just the really boring shit of getting food into the bellies of the soldiers at the front. Which now just means getting all of the information from this massive organization, centralizing it, doing computery things on it, getting it out to where it needs to go, the kind of things that AI is very good at, and the kind of things where your procedures and programs and software for doing that become deeply embedded in the organization. And ripping out one and replacing it with another is extraordinarily difficult. And for purely practical, non ideological reasons, I think we both agree that is not going to happen. And so at that point, like for all that, you're right. The there is a difference between OpenAI and anthropic in practice. I don't think it makes a difference in practice. Anthropic stays where it is.
- [27:01]
C
I think what's interesting aside from that is that the whole dust up appears to have drawn AI around partisan lines. So now we have like blue anthropic and red open AI and super red,
- [27:16]
A
super red X AI. OpenAI is trying to present itself as centrist, I guess.
- [27:21]
C
Sure. And then we've also seen like Anthropic saw, you know, more people starting to use it and they're just on like from a business perspective, they're on sort of a tear, I'd say these past
- [27:30]
A
couple of months they've just raised another $100 billion or whatever it was.
- [27:34]
C
Yeah, they announced that their like revenue run rate is much higher than it was like a month ago, whatever that means. And they've kept releasing these software plugins, like every week or so. That gets amazing press because every time they do it, it tanks the stocks of whatever sector they're involved in. They're just having a good time. I think they're having a moment. They're having their moment.
- [27:54]
A
And I'm not sure that having a big fight with Pete. He is bad for them.
- [27:58]
C
Exactly.
- [27:59]
B
Well, it also sort of raises the question of why Hegseth would choose this moment to sort of pick a fight with them when, you know, you can't really unwind all of that technology in a finger snap. And then right as we're going to
- [28:11]
C
war with Iran, it does seem like a bad timing.
- [28:13]
B
What would he do if they actually did cut off the model? They've a little bit got each other sort of backed in the corner. So.
- [28:19]
C
Yes, that's such a great point. It's like, this is not the time for that. And yet, as we see so often, that just doesn't seem to matter.
- [28:27]
B
Are you saying Hegseth isn't completely rational all the time?
- [28:30]
C
I don't know. I wouldn't pretend to know his mind.
- [28:33]
A
No. I think he's pretty transparent. I mean, I think actually with Hegseth, what you see is what you get. He's just this rah rah, like I want to be lethality maxing or whatever the fuck they these words.
- [28:44]
C
You do seem excited about the war.
- [28:46]
A
Yeah. And you're like, okay. He presents as a maga chud and I think he's basically a maga chud. Slate money is sponsored this week by Stash. Have you dabbled in investing here and there, but haven't been happy with how things are going? Stash helps turn good intentions into consistent progress. Stash isn't just another investing app. It's a registered investment advisor that combines automated investing with expert personalized guidance so you don't have to worry about gambling or figuring out on your own. It's simple. It's smart, it's stress free. It has a smart portfolio that helps you invest in a diversified balanced portfolio and on a regular schedule, which can help you build wealth over the long term. Join over 1,000,000 Active Stash subscribers and finally, let your money work as hard as you do. Don't let your money sit around. Put it to work with stash. Go to get.stash.commoney to see how you can receive $25 towards your first stock purchase and to view important disclosures that that's get.stash.commoney get.stash.commoney paid non client endorsement Not a guarantee nor representative of all clients. Smart portfolios are discretionary managed accounts and subject to additional fees. See the Advisory Agreement and Deposit Account Agreement for details. Investment Advisory Services offered by Stash Investments llc, an SEC registered investment advisor. Investing Involves Risk Slay MONEY is sponsored this week 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, rates shift and risks hide in plain sight. That's why having a partner with scale and expertise matters. Vanguard brings both. Vanguard bonds are institutional quality. That's not a tagline, it's a commitment to your clients. It means top grade products across the board. The Lineup has over 80 bond funds that are actively managed by a 200 person global squad of sector specialists, analysts and traders. This is not a firm with star portfolio managers. It's a different philosophy where the best active strategies aren't locked away with one person, they're shared across the team. So every client benefits from the collective brainpower, not just one individual's take. The bond market is insanely complex. It's not something one person or even a small team can realistically keep up with. Vanguard has been in the game a long time and their scale gives them a serious edge. They're able to invest across all kinds of sectors, maturities and geographies, which means they can spot and act on opportunities that others might miss. Some managers out there promise big returns, but those usually come with big risks. And that can mean a rollercoaster ride for investors. Vanguard takes a steadier approach. They don't go all in on risky bets. They focus on reliability and consistency. It's not always flashy, but it sets the standard for what dependable investing should look like. 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 Distributed. We should talk about important stuff like none of this war and AI and the future of the planet and we're going to run out of oil and the Strait of Hormuz and the war in Iraq. No. There is one important business and finance piece of news this week and God damn It. If we're not gonna cover it, Elizabeth, what happened?
- [33:02]
B
We're gonna talk about the great burger war of 2026. McDonald's CEO, he calls himself Chris K. I think his last name is Kemp Jack or something like that, made a video of himself eating McDonald's new burger, the Big Arch, and he kept referring to it as the product. And then he took a tiny, dainty little bite of it. And this was widely ridiculed all over the Internet because it seemed like he didn't even like the burger. And it was just like he'd never seen a burger before. And all of the competitors jumped in, and this went incredibly viral. So you had a video of the Burger King CEO taking a giant bite out of a Whopper and very performatively enjoying it and all the other brands jumping in. So now the question is, is the Big Arch actually good, or does the CEO reaction to it embody exactly what it is, which is just another McDonald's product?
- [33:51]
A
And Emily is here to answer that question, because, Emily, in the interests of journalism, you ate some portion of a Big Arch. All of it.
- [33:59]
C
Jessamyn, do we have the tape? I'm risking my life here because it's raining kind of hard. I don't like to drive in the rain because I am a bad driver. Oh, I see the Argentine waiting. I'm behind an Acura, y'.
- [34:14]
A
All.
- [34:14]
C
We're moving. Can I order the New Arch burger? Oh, wow. It was $12.99 before tax, but with tax, $14.08. Mia, you are definitely paying for this. I'll eat the fries while I drive. I'm back. Got my fries.
- [34:34]
B
Wow.
- [34:34]
C
I really did eat half of them. They went down pretty easy. Big Arch, honestly, looks pretty good. Oh, my gosh. It's, like, heavy. I'm taking a bite, but not like the McDonald's guy. More like the Burger King guy. Oh, my God.
- [34:48]
A
Wow. Very good.
- [34:50]
C
It's really salty. It looks like real meat. It's, like, a little pink inside, which is sort of surprising. The onion taste is very strong. It basically just tastes like a McDonald's burger, but it's way bigger. I'm understanding why. It's a thousand calories. It's not a delicious burger, but it's very tasty. And I don't know, I might eat all of it.
- [35:08]
B
That's it.
- [35:08]
C
Signing off. I'm hopping back on here because I have a postscript, which is, I'm basically almost done with this gigantic burger. I'm jacked up on Diet Coke filled with sodium. I don't know what this means for my productivity for the rest of the day. But all right, that's all.
- [35:25]
A
That was not. I just need to come in here and say that was not all because we then got slack messages from Emily saying I'm on my 20th glass of water. There are according to the Internet that's 1760mg of sodium in this.
- [35:40]
C
I was so thirsty all day after that. Oh my God.
- [35:43]
A
Did you eat the whole thing?
- [35:44]
C
I left a little bite over. If you know like 90s ladies know, you just leave a little bite over to be like I didn't need to finish it but I ate the whole thing. Let's be honest. I couldn't stop once I started. It was so salty and heavy like the weight of it in my hand. I cannot believe they sell these things to just like on a mass scale. It's wild stuff. But yeah, I ate the whole.
- [36:07]
A
So it wasn't the burger. It was the burger and a Diet Coke that was $12.99.
- [36:11]
C
It was a full big arch meal that was $12.99. So it was a medium fries. The Big Arch burger which is two patties, half a pound of meat with some weird orange sauce that I don't know what it's called, I didn't look it up. Some weird orange sauce, two different kinds of onion product on there. It's product, it's not real onion.
- [36:30]
A
It's product. It's all product. But the one piece of product that is not in there, this is dear to my heart, is tomato. Because we are old enough to remember the Arch Deluxe, the disastrous predecessor to the Big Arch. The Arch Deluxe was basically a big arch but with tomato. And McDonald's can't fuck with tomato, it just doesn't work. So they dropped the Arch luxe. They bring back the Big Arch which is the same concept of like a big grown up burger. But son's tomato. Did you miss the tomato?
- [37:01]
C
Yeah, I really could have used a of ton a tomato as you would say. It really could have used it because it was so salty.
- [37:08]
A
I'm telling you like I'm going to get this entire country onto tomato and petrol.
- [37:12]
B
I took a bite of one.
- [37:14]
C
Oh yeah, Elizabeth, you took a bite of one?
- [37:15]
A
Oh well not only did Elizabeth take a bite of one but Elizabeth's son took a bite of one.
- [37:21]
B
Yeah, my 10 year old son Ford has tried the burger last night and gave me a review.
- [37:27]
C
Play the tape.
- [37:28]
B
I'm gonna try for a large burger. We're gonna see if it's good, good, or bad. 3, 2, 1. That is a much bigger bite than the McDonald's CEO took. Even though your mouth is smaller, it's pretty good. Like 1 to 10.
- [37:46]
C
10.
- [37:46]
B
But I think all burgers are 10. That's fair. What would you do to improve this burger? I say we will the sauce because the sauce is really messy. No sauce doesn't mean no flavor. We still got all these other ingredients. I'm not that invested into burgers, but I have an ideal burger.
- [38:09]
A
All burgers are 10.
- [38:11]
C
Love it.
- [38:11]
A
I think this is a good way of rating burgers. Just rate all your burgers on a scale of 1 to 10 and give them all a 10. And I have to say, although you are very polite to your son, the sheer size of this burger is so enormous.
- [38:26]
C
It was as big as his face.
- [38:28]
A
His bite was not actually bigger than the McDonald's CEO bite.
- [38:32]
C
His burger was half the size of his head.
- [38:35]
B
I agree that there was too much sauce, too. It made the burger very messy.
- [38:39]
C
Messy.
- [38:40]
B
And I couldn't tell what the sauce was. It's like every fast food chain has a special sauce, and they call it special sauce and are intentionally vague about whatever was in it.
- [38:49]
C
It's just salt and mayonnaise.
- [38:51]
A
But the bigger question is, like, could this McDonald's viral video have been more successful if they tried? Like, we have Elizabeth's kid eating the burger. We have Emily Peck eating the burger. We have everyone talking about this fucking burger. The earned media on this burger is off the chart. The number of people who know that this burger exists is enormous. And if the McDonald's CEO had just done a boring, like, drinking water, Emily's still drinking water. If Chris K. Had done a normal, like, delicious, it would have disappeared into the sea of slop and never been seen again. And this, in a weird way just shows how to do social media right in 2026 is by fucking it up.
- [39:33]
C
Yeah. When you do it wrong, you're actually doing it right. Yeah, somehow. But also, I just want to note, and I made this point in the slack and end in our meeting, and I think it's the only point I have around this whole thing is like, Chris, the CEO of McDonald's, did his video, and then the CEO of Burger King and Wendy's were like, we're gonna do a video too. Ha ha ha. We'll take bigger bites. But if you just look at the screenshots of these videos and these guys eating the burgers, they look all the same. They look like they never eat Fast food. They're very slim. They're wearing very nice sweaters, sharp glasses. They look like they just came in from the links and the only place they're having burgers is at the country club.
- [40:13]
B
They're all identically looking white guys.
- [40:15]
A
The thing it reminds me of is when all of the cigarette company CEOs would always be asked, do you smoke cigarettes? And they would always answer the same way, which is, I like a nice cigar now and then. Which is their way of saying, no, of course I don't fucking smoke. But yeah, it's bad for you. Burgers are bad for you. Do not eat. Like there's. How many calories are in this fucking thing?
- [40:39]
C
It's insane.
- [40:40]
B
Over a thousand.
- [40:41]
A
Over a thousand.
- [40:41]
C
You cannot get high in your own supply. Is that how they say? But there's.
- [40:44]
B
I would argue that the McDonald's CEO was like a little dorkier than the other CEOs and people picked up on that. Like somebody referred to him as a LinkedIn guy in a TikTok world whose aura screams kale salad.
- [40:57]
A
You say that like it's a bad thing.
- [41:00]
C
They're going to live really long time with all their money, all their safe dollars that they're holding on to right
- [41:05]
A
now, which they've just moved back to their private nutritionist United States room there risk appetite in the Middle East.
- [41:12]
C
Just talking about the burger right now. I kind of want another one.
- [41:18]
A
Help.
- [41:18]
B
That's how they get you.
- [41:19]
C
Emily, the fries were so good.
- [41:21]
A
Would you make zoo with just like a standard Quarter Pounder or do you want another Big arch?
- [41:26]
C
Well, I would never get another big arch. Being honest. A thousand calories and drinking 6 gallons of water in a day, it's not in the cards. But I might get the fries again, you guys. I don't know, maybe a burger from a local place.
- [41:39]
B
Everybody likes the fries, though. Everyone quietly likes them.
- [41:42]
C
Fries.
- [41:42]
A
We've been quietly. Everyone noisily likes the fries. McDonald's fries are famous as the greatest fries in Christendom. Like, I will eat McDonald's fries happily.
- [41:51]
B
I feel like there are raw food influencers, though, who quietly sneak to McDonald's and just get the fries.
- [41:57]
A
Yeah, that. Wasn't that what the breatharian got outed as? Like quietly eating McDonald's when she wasn't pretending to live on nothing but air. We should have a numbers round because God damn it, we need to bring this show to a close. Elizabeth, what's your number?
- [42:27]
B
Well, this is kind of related, but My number is $90 and $90 and that's the weekly spend at a restaurant now for Americans, down $25 from last year or last summer.
- [42:38]
A
Oh, wow. Deflation. Yeah.
- [42:40]
B
So this is mostly affecting the food slop chains, sort of sweet grain or the bowl of slop balls change.
- [42:46]
A
You're saying, like, this is a massive decrease if true, like, yeah, this is average weekly restaurant spend across all Americans.
- [42:54]
B
Yeah. And I think some of it in the article that I read, some of it was a function of a lot of that money being spent by particularly middle income people or upper income people at places like Sweet GRE and Cava. And even Chipotle is considered that middle market because 60% of chipotle customers make 100k or more a year. So they raised their prices last year by quite a bit. And so people are just shifting away from that or making food at home or whatever, and they don't really have any downmarket offerings. Chipotle tried a $3.50 taco and it had mixed results. So that's why sweetgreen and kava are suffering a little bit right now because people are spending less money.
- [43:33]
C
Wow.
- [43:34]
A
My number is also about household incomes in a way. It's $320,141, the average annual household income of the average person who goes to see a Broadway play. Oh, $320,000. That's much higher than I thought it would be. It's also, by the way, significantly higher than $267,000, which is the average household income of someone who goes to see a Broadway musical.
- [44:03]
C
Huh. So it's a very high brow. I don't think that is surprising, actually,
- [44:07]
A
Felix, this is interesting to me because obviously Broadway is in New York. New York is a high income kind of place. But these are high salaries, even by New York standards. And you watch the Tony Awards and these are like national celebrities. And there's this idea that Broadway is very all American and by the numbers, it seems to be much more elite than I'd imagined.
- [44:32]
C
To be able to afford to go and see a show if you don't live in New York or even if you do is really expensive.
- [44:39]
B
Ticket prices are insanely high.
- [44:41]
C
We've talked about the thousand dollar ticket prices in all of this for like the hottest shows. Right, right.
- [44:46]
A
But like, yeah, the average ticket price is, you know, it's like 150 bucks, which is still a meaningful chunk of change. And it's part of the reason, I think, why the household income is so high is just because it's harder for people on lower incomes to afford it. But yeah, you can totally afford it if you're scratching by on 150 grand a year. But there's also just a class thing. I think that the social class of theatergoers is actually higher than they might have expected. And there is, this, being America, a strong correlation between social class and income.
- [45:16]
B
I think that's probably true, but aren't the highest grossing Broadway productions the ones that, you know, like, all the tourists go to, like, big Lion Kingy sort of shows, but you have to have
- [45:26]
C
a lot of money to be a tourist.
- [45:27]
A
Yeah. And those are the ones where the household income is a mere 267,000. Anyway, Emily, what's your number?
- [45:35]
C
I was thinking, like, I would have to change it to do the jobs number, which is really bad. Go look at the news if you're listening. We lost a lot of jobs in February, but my number is six. That is the approximate number of vests owned by Demir Johnson, age 23.
- [45:52]
A
Oh, my God. Interview magazine for the win.
- [45:54]
C
He is one of the, quote, finest boys in finance profiled this week by Interview magazine and Demar and his. The other boys in the piece are getting a lot of pushback, mostly from the New York Post, which I think is being annoying. If you read the interview, it's like, honestly, it's kind of sweet. These quote, unquote boys, they are men, of course. They're in their early 20s, and they say things like when asked what is your idea of hell? Namar says, not making my family proud. Like, why are we giving these. These kids?
- [46:29]
B
They're all like, the business 22. The whole feature was just inexplicable because it was like, the finest men in finance. And then there are, like, five kids, really young.
- [46:37]
C
There's a picture of two of them with cake slices toasting each other, maybe
- [46:42]
B
because they're not old enough to drink.
- [46:44]
C
And then later, the New York Post written, like, I don't know, three, four articles at this point about it. And they're like, goldman might fire two of the boys in finance. And then there's like a quote from Goldman's PR person being like, we did not authorize the profile. And they're like, they might be fired or punished. And it's just like, everyone, calm down. This was fun.
- [47:03]
B
We can.
- [47:04]
C
We can calm down. No.
- [47:05]
A
Although I have to say, would you or would you not fire someone? This is a genuine question and a genuine answer question. Where do you take dates? Answer. Art galleries where the wine is free and then Tao downtown afterwards. That is the wrong answer. I don't know what the right answer is, but I know that is the wrong answer.
- [47:28]
C
But again, so what?
- [47:31]
B
That guy's never going on a date to an art gallery again.
- [47:34]
C
These pictures are gonna haunt these people for a long time. But it's all in good fun and I hope they don't get fired.
- [47:40]
A
Yeah, no, it was in good fun. And you're right, they did come across pretty cute.
- [47:44]
C
I was just like, oh, the guy
- [47:46]
B
with the vest was adorable. The vest.
- [47:49]
C
Each. Each guy had to answer about the vests.
- [47:52]
A
How many vests do you.
- [47:53]
C
One said just one.
- [47:55]
A
Unfortunately, you know that in like 10 years when these guys are getting married, this is going to be the centerpiece of the best man speech.
- [48:04]
C
I hope so. And like a slideshow where they'll be in the slideshow. Good stuff.
- [48:08]
A
Yeah. Claim to fame. That is it for us this week. Thanks very much for listening to Slate Money. Thanks to Jessamyn Molly for producing and a special thanks to Shayna Roth for telling Emily to expense her big arch.
- [48:23]
C
And thanks to Mia for paying for it.
- [48:25]
A
And thanks to Mia for paying for the big arch. Thanks to all of you guys for writing in on slatemoneylate.com and we'll be back next week with more Slate Money. You didn't start a business just to keep the lights on. You're here to sell more today than yesterday. You're here to win. Lucky for you, Shopify built the best converting checkout on the planet. Like the just one tapping ridiculously fast
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C
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A
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B
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