Scott Bessent Fails to Calm Bond Market & This Chinese Movie is So Bad, It’s Good

Are you sucking wind from trying to keep up with AI and its impact? Take a breather and tune in to The Intelligence Shift, Morning Brew's new podcast with PWC. It bridges the gap between big picture AI concepts and what it actually means in practice. Host Dan Priest is joined by expert guests to discuss AI's role in sports, music, HR, and more. Listen to The Intelligence Shift wherever you get your podcasts. Good Morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Scott Fessett fails to calm the nervous bond market. Then, a Chinese animated movie is so awful, it's turned into an unexpected blockbuster hit. It's Friday, August 21st. Let's ride. Happy Friday and welcome back, Toby, our freshly married king. No idea why you decided to come back on Friday right before the weekend, but we'll take it. My first question, do you have your voice back? Because last time I talked to you, the day after you came back, you could only whisper like this. It was really, really bad, so thank you for holding down the fort. I will tell you an unexpected joy of being married. When I was filling out a sign-up form for a race I'm completing, it came time to list my emergency contact, and they asked how they're related to me. And I got to check the box that said spouse. So there's that. Plus, I'm a big ring guy. It's a nice little fidget spinner. But marital life so far is bliss. Summer wedding was awesome. She's a Leo, so to get married during her birthday month was very fun for her. But also, my wife is not the only Leo in my life, because today is also your birthday, Neil. Did I cut my mini-moon short just so I could be back for your birthday show? No. But it sounds good to say that. That would have been crazy. Thank you, Toby. Thank you, Toby. Thank you, everyone. Okay, and now a word from our sponsor, Rubrik. Toby, throw your cybersecurity industry rulebook away. Neil, I've thrown away. I've thrown away so many books, I can't keep track of them all. Figure of speech, Toby. But the truth is, the old model for cybersecurity was built on protection. Safety nets, recovery plans, systems designed to withstand the last era and maintain the status quo. It candles up in the present day. The AI era demands confidence that you can secure and accelerate your business operations so nothing stops your momentum. Rubrik can give you that confidence. Their platform helps you keep going by securing your data, controlling your AI, and protecting your identity built as one architecture. Not stitched together after the fact. To learn more about how Rubrik rewrote the industry rulebook, head to rubrik.com slash mb. That's r-u-b-r-i-k dot com slash m-b. It was supposed to be a chill late August week. Final trip to the beach, maybe. Little League on the telly, checking off your summer bucket list. But then, the bond market threw a tantrum, and Scott Besson's attempt to clean it up didn't work as planned, leaving everyone with more questions. Back on Wednesday, you heard us mention that 30-year bond yields, long-dated yields, had risen to their highest levels since before the financial crisis. It's a result of numerous factors, rising deficits, more inflation, AI bond issuance. None of them particularly optimistic for the economy, and the end result is higher borrowing costs for regular Americans and the government. Then, out of left field, Treasury Secretary Scott Besson decided to take the unusual step of doubling buybacks of this longer-dated government. Besson said he'd be willing to pay the government debt in a bid to lower yields. This is what Besson has wanted since he was appointed by Trump. Lower yields, lower borrowing costs to make life more affordable. It worked for a whole day. Bond yields fell on Wednesday in response to the Treasury stepping in. But yesterday, we were back on the elevator, with yields basically back to where they were before Besson made his move. This did not surprise analysts, who compared the ramped-up buying to throwing a paper towel into a tsunami. But it signals the next act of a Treasury Secretary who is far more intelligent, interventionist than his predecessors, willing and eager to go full hedge fund mode to achieve the outcome he desires. The problem is, those outcomes haven't yet materialized, and we remain stuck in the same mess. Yeah, Besson's buyback didn't work because it's just too dang small. Columbia Threadneedle Investments called the intervention minuscule. 24-Hour Asset Management called it sticking plaster on a much bigger issue. It just doesn't fix the underlying reasons why these yields are going up. He can try to. You can try to influence the supply and demand dynamics of this massive, massive market, but you cannot eliminate the fundamental reasons why the market's behaving why they did, which is what you mentioned. I mean, the U.S. fiscal situation is not good. You were away on the mini-moon when we hit $40 trillion in debt. So you were living blissfully ignorant of when that happened. I'm racking up my own personal debt on the mini-moon, not quite $40 trillion. But yeah, I mean, and then the interesting thing, too, is not only is there the $40 trillion debt, not only is inflation the issue. But you mentioned AI debt is now just a lot more competitive. If you are someone who wants to figure out what to do with their money and you see treasuries, you also see these, you know, great companies issuing a lot of bonds themselves. So you can go get yourself a slice of Google or a slice of Meta rather than only relying on U.S. treasuries. So there's just a lot of reasons for those higher rates. So throwing, I forget what you said, at a typhoon or a hurricane. Toilet paper. Toilet paper, thank you. At a hurricane, it's just not going to do that much in this big. Big market. And a fascinating subplot is unfolding here, pitting Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary, against the Fed chair, the new Fed chair, Kevin Warsh. Kevin Warsh has ripped up the rulebook when it comes to Fed guidance and communications in his last press conference. He said, look, I'm not going to tell markets what to do. I'm going to let markets take the lead and we'll go from there. So he has said that he wanted higher interest rates because that lets the markets do the Fed's work for it, because he. He doesn't want to raise interest rates, especially if the rates in the market are going up. Meanwhile, you have Scott Besson over here saying, well, interest rates are going up in the market. That is not good news. I don't think that's right. So I'm going to intervene very aggressively in ways we haven't seen in recent memory to bring them back down. So you're seeing a huge clash play out between these two economic policymakers. And Warsh has literally said, I want a leaner, meaner balance sheet. Remember, the Fed owns a lot of government. 6.8 trillion dollars of bonds and mortgage-backed securities. Basically, if he's saying a leaner, meaner balance sheet, that would mean selling some of those. And that is returning bonds to investors, which is exactly against what Scott Besson wants right there. Now, there is some way that they can actually coordinate. The Fed actually could start owning more short-term securities and fewer long-term securities. And that does exactly what Besson wants, which is, you know, take some of these long-term debt off the market. So there's a way that they can be friends, not just opposing each other. But you're right that it is absolutely a fascinating subplot because these are two very impactful figures that can technically butt heads. Yeah, and we're seeing just a very interventionist Treasury Secretary right now. And it's probably not a coincidence that this guy made his money, and he's extremely rich, as a bond salesman. He calls himself the nation's top bond salesman in a previous life. This is what he did. He was buying and selling bonds. And now he became Treasury Secretary. And he's doing the exact same thing in a different role, in a role that typically you are very passive and you let the markets do the work as a technocrat. But now he's like, I guess I just missed the old days on Wall Street. I need to get back into it. I mean, let's zoom out a little bit, too. Right now, it is August. But what is coming around the corner? It is November 4th, which is midterm election day. And some, you know, industry watchers are saying this is clearly a short-term play to try to get interest rates down ahead of the upcoming election. This has happened with other Treasury Secretaries in the past. Being accused of doing something similar. So that's kind of like the medium to near-term. Long-term, there's a lot of consequences of this type of behavior. Namely, the market is no longer the only thing determining the appropriate long-term interest rate. If you always expect, once yields go up, that the Treasury is going to intervene, that kind of warps and makes markets a little bit more wonky. So that's the risk that you run when you put on your trader hat, when you put on this interventionist hat. And that's why a lot of people are saying maybe this is not great. It's not great for the health of the bond market long-term. Final note, Scott Besson, same birthday as me. Same birthday. Same birthday as me. Happy birthday, Scott. All right, let's move on. Walmart had a rough week on Wall Street after its stock adopted its everyday low-price guarantee. Shares fell nearly 10% yesterday, their biggest decline since 2022, after the retail chain reported its slowest sales growth since the early days of the pandemic. Wally World is often seen as a barometer for the health of the American consumer. And right now, it's clear they have a bit of a cold. Same store sales only rose 2.6% compared to 4.6% a year earlier, which Walmart CFO John David Rainey blamed squarely on high prices at the pump. When gas crossed $4 a gallon in July, Rainey said there's a psychological impact to that. Execs say they saw consumer attitudes change as soon as that barrier was exceeded, as higher fuel costs left households with less money for spending on everything else. While consumers are pinched, Walmart's balance sheet. actually got a major boost via a $2.9 billion tariff refund, the largest reported by any company so far. It subsequently tried to pass that money on to consumers via what it called price investments, cutting prices on 11,000 products during the quarter. This actually wasn't an awful quarter for Walmart. It still made $6.4 billion in net income and raised its full-year profit outlook. The concern here really is the consumer. If Americans are starting to feel the squeeze, eventually that's going to show up in Walmart. Walmart's numbers too. - Yeah, Walmart tried to blame this slowing growth on one in particular, and that's its pharmacy business. They said that federal negotiations led to lower drug prices, which is great news for us, but bad news for Walmart. A lot of people, most people who buy drugs go in person and buy them from Walmart. And thanks to negotiations by the federal government with pharma companies, those prices were lower. So it's bad news for Walmart, good news for us. And one of the reasons you're seeing in-store comparable sales slow is because, yeah, most people go into the store itself. Walmart is trying to fashion itself as more of a hybrid retailer now. They point to 24% growth in e-commerce, which also includes its advertising business. They're saying, look, this is not really who we are anymore. People don't just come and shop for stuff at Walmart. They order stuff and then they go pick it up. And so they're trying to signal to investors to don't really pay attention to that comparable sales number that is cited as the slowest in six years. And look at the overall picture. Which is that people are a lot on Walmart.com and they just come to the store to bring it in their cars. But also when Walmart reports, it's kind of indicative of the entire retail environment. So let's look at what happened during earnings for retail companies. It was kind of a mixed bag where a lot of these companies were saying that, hey, consumers aren't necessarily broke, for lack of a better word. They are extremely cautious right now. We saw Target, Home Depot, Lowe's, and TJ Maxx all report. And they were. They're all saying the same thing is that four-year-old gasoline definitely hurt. The fragile job market and slower wage growth is kind of having this psychological impact on consumers, more so than their actual balance sheet. They're saying that consumers seem relatively healthy on the surface. But again, if you look at a company like Lowe's, it's so easy to delay that home improvement project because you want to do it at a time where you feel more financially stable. And that shows up in their numbers, even if the consumers themselves are feeling relatively okay. When it comes to their personal savings. Welcome to Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week, the segment where Toby and I pick one stock that took a mini moon and another that was stuck here, grinding it out in the podcast studio. I won the pre-show game of hide and seek, so I get to go first. And my Stock of the Week is New Lie, a Chinese movie so bad it's become a sensation, going toe-to-toe with mainstream blockbusters The Odyssey and Spider-Man Brand New Day. This is one of my favorite stories of the summer, a real underdog tale. So this movie, New Lie, is an animated film about a baby cow meeting other animals in a dream sequence. The animation is comically horrible, all pixelated and looking like something out of Microsoft Paint. The budget has been reported to be anywhere from $200 to $3,000, so super bare bones, which makes sense because it was made by just two people, a guy and his mother. When it originally opened in theaters early August, it did as well as you might expect for a movie of this caliber. That is, New Lie. Horrible. It earned just $1,000 in its first 10 days, with fewer than 300 people across China buying a ticket. But then, something happened. A match was lit. People started talking about New Lie, how crudely animated it was, how silly it would be to see it, making memes about it on the internet. And the movie absolutely blew up. As of Thursday, it had grossed $4.3 million at the box office, ranking right behind Spider-Man, which cost $225 million to make. Meanwhile, an entire economy has sprouted alongside the movie, involving toys, robots, and other merch. Toby, I think we may be looking at one of the most profitable movies ever made, and also one of the worst. However bad you think it is, it is a thousand, a million times worth. I encourage you to look it up, N-I-U-L-A-I, so you get a sense of what we are talking about here. And there's really two factors at play. One, the so-bad-it's-good approach, where people are comparing it to the room, which is that movie. And the other one is the so-bad-it's-good approach, where people are comparing it to the room, which is that movie. And the other one is the so-bad-it's-good approach, that came out in 2003. High mark. Yeah, high mark. It defies logic at how something like this can be made, and that is what brings people in. So that's one part of it. The other part of it is that it has seen the stock investing crowd really embrace it, because the name itself actually translates to, here comes the bull, which again, bull market. So that's one thing. And they've been ascribing these ulterior meanings to the movie, that when the leopard appears, that is representative of a dead cat bounce, which is where stocks jump up quickly and then go back down again. When the cobra appears, that's actually a sign for technical analysis. And so there's all this kind of embracing from the stock trading crowd in China, who kind of has this wry sense of defeatism, because stocks have not done well in the Chinese market compared to the American market. But it is just so funny how it is just supremely resonated with this one group of stock traders, which is the so-bad-it's-good approach, which is the so-bad-it's-good approach, which is part of the reason why you're seeing these big box office numbers. It's so wild. They didn't have any marketing. They didn't have a poster. So when movie theaters were putting this on, they actually had to draw their own posters to get people to come in, because this was made allegedly for as little as $200. I think another big reason that people wanted to see this movie or why it's been so embraced, it's anti-AI. It's the same thing as you intentionally putting typos into your emails and posts. It's the same thing as you intentionally putting typos into your posts to show that it wasn't AI. And at a time when AI slop seems to be taking over our lives and maybe taking over movies, people really embrace this particular movie as very clear proof that AI wasn't used, because the animation is so horrible. It's not slick. It's not perfect in any way. I mean, it's far from perfect. But people online in China were saying, we love this, because we know it's not AI. Can I just get a movie in the movie theaters? What's the threshold for getting a this is the worst movie of all time. It was made for $200. How is it in theaters in China? This is something, this is a rabbit hole I need to go down, because now I kind of want to get, I probably have to pay some money to get it into the theaters, but it was just baffling to me how this could even make it to a big screen in the first place. I want to make my own new lie now. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with my dog of the week right after this. The following is a paid version of the show. powered dash growth. 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When you sign up at square.com slash go slash morning brew daily. That's S Q U A R E dot com slash go slash morning brew daily. My dog of the week is Nike because the swoosh has fallen after reporting earnings earlier this week. Shares are down nearly 80% from their late 2021 highs and are currently trading at a 12 year low. There's not one single thing you can point to as to why Nike has fallen. I'm going to tell you why. I'm going to tell you why Nike has fallen. I'm going to tell you why Nike has been brought to its knees, but there is a plethora. Input costs went up. Thanks to tariff. It relied heavily on older shoe models rather than innovating. They put too many eggs in a DTC basket, neglected its wholesale business and alienated some customers on certain social issues. The list goes on, but perhaps nothing sums up Nike's woes more than the fact that it's no longer the only game in town. Competitors like on and Hoka have taken bites out of its business and Nike may have taken for minutes. Nowhere is this more apparent than in China, where revenue fell 12% in the most recent quarter. Neil, new CEO Elliot Hill told employees earlier this year, I'm so tired and I know you are too of talking about fixing this business, but we're going to keep talking about it because it is just staggering to see how far this iconic brand has fallen. Kind of feels like LeBron on the Sixers, just sad and wrong. That was completely unnecessary on my birthday too. And also just anyway, Nike has been dog of the week. How many times it struggles are not new, but it kind of caught fire online this week as people started reflecting on what happened to Nike and trying to diagnose its problems. And it is striking because this is the one of the most recognizable brands ever created. I could go to any country in the world, print out a picture with that swoosh, hold it up to them. And they'd be like, yeah, that's Nike. And to see its stock fall 80% is kind of shocks the system because we have, talked about a bunch of other big companies that have struggled recently that are trying to turn things around with new CEOs. I'm thinking like Boeing, Starbucks, and Target. This was a big theme going into this year. Every single one of those companies has turned things around. Starbucks is back on the up. Target, we just talked about, is back on the up. Boeing also is doing fine. And there's Nike, and it's down 80% from its peak, trading at levels not seen since 2014. Just a shocking fall for a company that we all thought was too big to fail. Yeah, I think that Nike took its brand for granted because we're like, we are Nike. Everyone knows the Nike swoosh. We can charge premium prices because we're Nike. And that eventually runs out of steam because if you do that without supporting it with product innovation, without keeping the cultural relevance that made you what you are, then absolutely you're going to see that brand start to erode. They thought it was just, they over-optimized too. Short-term things where they wanted to protect their margins. They want to deliver consistent growth to shareholders. But if you do all that and you forget what made you what you are, that's where you end up in the stage that you're at right now. It felt like they kept choosing to push customers to the absolute limit of what they could tolerate paying instead of doing things like making their products better and delivering innovation to their customers. So there's definitely an argument here about, what the incentive structure is at Nike right now. Is it to just milk their customers for everything that they're worth or is it to actually deliver something that they want to wear? And a common criticism you hear on the right is go woke, go broke. And the thought is that they moved away from selling athletic excellence and they moved toward selling more of a lifestyle and an identity. And they point to these things starting in 2017, like teaming up with Colin Kaepernick and making him the face of Nike. And I think that's a really good point. And pride campaigns and all of that. And so that is one, they moved away from the Michael Jordan of it all and moved more into lifestyle and promoting this particular way of life. The problem is the pushback on that is that a bunch of Nike's peers are also getting crushed that didn't necessarily go woke. Lulu is down 70% in the last five years. Puma down 76%. Adidas is down 50%. Under Armour down 80%. So this whole legacy, world of apparel makers, of sportswear makers is getting crushed over the last five years because I think you're seeing a couple things. One is competition in China. Nike's getting absolutely walloped in China and all these other brands by homegrown competition. And the other is other competition on Hoka are delivering better products and more innovation. And people are eventually going to gravitate to that because they don't care about whatever brand that you've been putting out for the last 10 years. They care about what's the best next sneaker I could buy. I'm wearing them right now. They still, you know, a great brand. I'm going for a run after this. So that is the one thing that they do have in their back pocket, no matter how much they may have squandered or lead or squandered their dominant market share. The swoosh is still the swoosh. So that's why a lot of investors are saying, we just can't quit you yet. Maybe they'll figure it out. They'll get back to their roots, get back to the communities that they kind of built their brand and legacy on. So that's why you still see, you know, analysts with buy rating on this company, no matter how far it has fallen. Let's spread to the finish with some final headlines. Well, it could be time to test out the carnivore diet. The FDA has issued its highest risk warning for some frozen fruit after an E. coli outbreak was linked to organic blueberries and mixed berries sold at Publix. The FDA has classified the recall as class one, meaning exposure could cause serious illness or death. So far, 12 people in Florida and Georgia have gotten sick and four have been hospitalized. Neil, the morning smoothie is under assault from all sides. The FDA has been dealing with a ton of food recalls and outbreaks recently, including the major cyclospora scare tied to Taylor Farms. There was also the salmonella outbreak tied to jalapenos, but I hope to God those aren't making it into your morning smoothies. Someone on X compiled the list of foods that have been recalled. I'll just read a few. Frozen blueberries, possible E. coli contamination, iceberg lettuce, possible cyclospora contamination, shell eggs, salmonella contamination, mixed berries, E. coli, pistachio, nut butter, salmonella, green powder supplements, salmonella, soup kits, listeria, salad dressing, salmonella, granola, salmonella, dog food, salmonella, jalapenos, salmonella. That was just August. Okay. There's been a lot. I was about to read July, but I think I'll spare everyone. And that might seem like a lot, but so far, let's put some, let's do a little fact check. The FDA and the federal government has recalled just 162 recalls compared to last year, 320 total. We're about halfway, exactly halfway through the year when that data was compiled, so it looks like we're, we're tracking about last year, even though it seems like a lot, they're just, you know, they just get reported. And that cyclospora one was pretty big. And I, and I do think, uh, the fact that it all is food you eat, you know, like the, well, all foods are stuff you want to take that one back. No, I feel like they're like foods. Lettuce is just such a basic component of so many dishes. Blueberries are just something that everyone eats for breakfast. I don't know if it's just the fact that they are just the main pillars of the food pyramid. And that's why. We're getting so up in arms about it, but don't clip that. They're all just food you eat right there. I stand by it. All right, moving on a U S army unit in Georgia is offering an unusual incentive to re enlist a mini vacation to play the new grand theft auto in exchange for two to six more years of their lives. Soldiers in the ninth brigade engineering battalion are being offered a four day pass to coincide with the release of the hugely anticipated video game on November 19th. So far, 20 of the 130,000 soldiers in the United States have been eligible have signed up. Lieutenant Colonel Angel Tomko, a spokesperson for the third infantry said the idea was to have a unique incentives program that connects to what soldiers are interested in. And if the GTA recruitment drive is successful in this one battalion, it could expand to other units in the army. Toby, I feel like this trade of four days for two to six years would be blocked in my fantasy football league, but it seems to be working. It does seem to be working. The army has had a long history of kind of courting video gamers and getting embedded in this, uh, corner of the world. You go back to 2018, the army was struggling. They were missing its recruiting goals. They started setting up booths at gaming conventions. They also started launching their own e-sports teams. Uh, call of duty has always had like a big tie in fortnight league of legends. All of these teams have army e-sports teams at this point. And that's because they sat down and said, what are the skills we want in the army? It's actually a ton of overlap with gaming. It's making decisions, quickly. It's processing large amounts of information. It's teamwork. So this is just the latest in their kind of long history of trying to court video gamers to join the ranks of the army. I was, I was talking to Ray yesterday and we were talking about this and he was like, four days is not enough to beat the game. Well, you can't beat it. It's beat the game. I don't think you can ever, but he's like four days is not enough for me, for you to do anything, do anything in the game. So I guess maybe they'll just do like, yeah, that shows how I don't know anything about GTA. He was just like, I wouldn't do it because four days is not enough to do anything in the game. So maybe they should offer another four days, uh, you know, at the end of your, your second re-enlistment. All right. Finally, whenever people are celebrating a $23 drink as a deal, you know, you've lost the plot a little bit. The U S open in tennis returns later this month. And with it, the honey deuce, the tournament's viral signature cocktail. And the big news with honey deuce this year is there's no news. The price $23 will stay at that level for the third consecutive tournament. To understand why this is a bit of a shock. This drink debuted in 2007 at just $12, then saw its price jacked up six times over 12 years to $23 in 2024. And honestly, they could probably charge more last year. 740,000 honey deuces were sold bringing in $17.2 million in sales. The crazy thing is if you go back to 2007, it was only sold from a single stand on the grounds. Can you imagine that these days it's a viral craze? But here's my theory. They kept the price the same because they calculated the headline of it not getting more expensive will lead to the perfect amount of social media buzz to actually increase sales more than a price hike would have. I don't know how to actually test that, but I want to know that someone had an algorithm say, we are going to get X amount of social media mentions. That is why we can keep it the same. That is all the time we have. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us. Have a wonderful Friday and an even better weekend to share your thoughts on the future. We'll see you next time on Morning Brew Daily. Now at Kroger, your points add up to more ways to save every trip. Use them your way to take dollars off groceries at checkout or save at the pump. You can even save up to $35 on your next fill up. Same points, more choices. And with low prices on fresh quality food plus digital and personalized offers tailored to how you shop, your dollar goes further. Redeem your points online or in the app. Kroger, fresh for everyone. Everyone restrictions apply. See site or store for details.