60 Minutes - 02/04/2024: Chairman Powell, A Hole in the System, The Mismatch

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

Following the Federal Reserve’s announcement to hold interest rates steady, correspondent Scott Pelley interviews Fed Chair Jerome Powell in Washington, DC on inflation risks and the economy, the timeline for cutting rates, the health of the country’s banks, and more. Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi reports on the fastest growing group entering the U.S. through the southern border – Chinese migrants. Alfonsi speaks with the migrants about following instructions posted on TikTok that guided them on their 7-thousand mile journey to the California desert where Chinese asylum seekers cross the border from Mexico through a 4-foot gap in the border fence. Technology has helped spur a sports betting boom. Correspondent Jon Wertheim examines what this has meant for sports fans, betting companies, and the gamblers – overwhelmingly young men – making snap bets anytime, anywhere. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The first season of Georgie and Mandy is a bonafide hit. Be cool, okay? We don't say it out loud. Hmm, okay. Can we just say it's great? Thank you for saying that, Elway. With lots and lots of laughs. So everybody knows. I only told Mandy.

I only told Mom and Dad. That's everybody. So, quick summary. Laugh at Georgie and Mandy's first marriage with all episodes now streaming on Paramount Plus and returning new CBS Fall. Yes, yes, also yes. There's no better person to ask about the state of the American economy than Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. We sat down with the chairman for a rare interview to ask about the future of interest rates,

whether prices will come down, and what the Fed might do next. Inflation has been falling steadily for 11 months. You've avoided a recession. Why not cut the rates now? The number of migrants arriving at the southern border is unprecedented. Last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection recorded 2.5 million instances of detaining or turning away people attempting to cross into the United States from Mexico. So what's the fastest growing group among them? Chinese migrants. Yes, you heard that right, Chinese.

Winning and losing money. For millions of fans like these guys, it's one more reason to watch and enjoy sports. But for others, it's not all fun and games. 60% of online bettors are young men, and it's a safe bet that many of them are addicted and losing. Where are the young men getting the money to gamble like this? I have patients, some of whom are college students, who have gambled federal student loan money. I have young patients who have gambled away inheritances. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories and more tonight on 60 Minutes. told Mandy. Well, I only told Mom and Dad. That's everybody. So, quick summary. Laugh at Georgie

and Mandy's first marriage with all episodes now streaming on Paramount Plus and returning new CBS Fall. Yes, yes, also yes. Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, may have just rescued the economy from inflation without throwing millions out of work. When Americans were suffering through the highest inflation in 40 years, Powell's Fed raised interest rates 11 times to cool the economy. Economists expected a recession, but, inflation is tumbling while employment is near a 50-year high. Thursday, we met Powell for a rare interview to talk about interest rates, remaining dangers, and the one question that's on everyone's mind. Is inflation dead?

I wouldn't go quite so far as that. What I can say is that inflation has come down really over the past year and fairly sharply over the past six months. We're making good progress. The job is not done, and we're very much committed to making sure that we fully restore price stability for the benefit of the public. But inflation has been falling steadily for 11 months. You've avoided a recession. Why not cut the rates now? Well, we have a strong economy. Growth is going on at a solid pace.

The labor market is strong, 3.7% unemployment. With the economy strong like that, we feel like we can approach the question of when to begin to reduce interest rates carefully. And we want to see more evidence that inflation is moving sustainably down to 2 percent. We have some confidence in that. Our confidence is rising. We just want some more confidence before we take that very important step of beginning to cut interest rates. Inflation has fallen from just over 9% to about 3%, near the Fed's ultimate goal of 2%. Why is your target rate 2%? Interest rates always include an estimate of future inflation.

If that estimate is 2%, that means you'll have 2% more that you can cut in your in-interest rates. The central bank will have more ammunition, more power to fight a downturn if rates are a little bit higher. Are you committed to getting all the way to 2.0 before you cut the rates? No, no, that's not what we say at all, no. We're committed to returning inflation to 2% over time.

I've said that we wouldn't wait to get to 2% to cut rates. We met Powell in the Federal Reserve Boardroom, where this committee meets every six weeks or so to set the so-called federal funds interest rate, which influences most loans. Last week, Powell announced the rate would stay at its 23-year high, about 5.5 percent, unchanged for six months. You disappointed a lot of people on Wednesday. I can't overstate how important it is to restore price stability, by which I mean inflation is low and predictable and people don't have to think about it in their daily lives. That's where we were for 20 years. We want to get back to that. Moving too soon would set off inflation again.

You could, or you could just halt the progress. I think more likely, if you move too soon, you'd see inflation settling out somewhere well above our 2% target. And what is the danger of moving too late? If you move too late, then you might, policy would be too tight, and that could easily weigh on economic activity and on the labor market. Maybe a recession. Right, and we have to balance those two risks. There is no easy, simple, obvious path.

Was the Fed too slow to recognize inflation in 2021? So in hindsight, it would have been better to have tightened policy earlier. Fed too slow to recognize inflation in 2021? So in hindsight, it would have been better to have tightened policy earlier. We thought that the economy was so dynamic that it would fix itself fairly quickly. And we thought that inflation would go away fairly quickly without an intervention by us. And so in the fourth quarter of 21, it became clear that inflation was not transitory in the sense that I mentioned. And we pivoted and started tightening. And as I said, it's essential that we did that. It was

critical that we did that. And that's part of the story why inflation is coming down now. We wondered about an interest rate cut in the next committee meeting in March. I think it's not likely that this committee will reach that level of confidence in time for the March meeting, which is in seven weeks. The next committee vote, then, would be in May. How would you characterize the consensus around this table believe that it will be appropriate in their most likely case for us to cut the federal funds rate this year. Cuts in the federal funds rate would likely be a quarter, maybe half a percentage point at a time, as long as inflation data remain good. We just want to see more good data along those lines. It doesn't need to be better than what we've seen or even as good. It just needs to be good. We just want to see more good data along those lines. It doesn't need to be

better than what we've seen or even as good. It just needs to be good. And so we do expect to see that. Back in 2021, little seemed good. Inflation ignited after pandemic disruptions and when the federal government spent $5 trillion to keep the economy afloat. Many in Congress questioned Powell's rapid rate increases and predicted disaster. And I hope you'll reconsider that as you drive this, before you drive this economy off a cliff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. But strangely, when rates went up, the economy added more than 5 million jobs. Powell told us that's because of the odd dynamics of the pandemic. Car sales, for example. It was a semiconductor shortage because so many people were buying goods that involved a lot of semiconductors. So while demand for cars

was spiking because people didn't want to ride public transportation, for example, and they're moving to the suburbs, while that's happening, you can't get semiconductors, you can't make cars. So there's a shortage. So what happened is inflation just spiked. But as the semiconductor supply came back, prices, the inflation has moderated a great deal. So really these unique features of the pandemic did reverse in a way that brought inflation down. Jerome Powell turns 71 today. After a career in investment banking, he was appointed to the Fed by Barack Obama, made chairman by Donald Trump, and retained by Joe Biden. Powell often travels to listen to the country, and we met him at Spellman College in

Atlanta, where the talk was of higher prices. Inflation is one thing, prices are another. And I wonder if there is any reason to believe that people will see the prices of things decline. So the prices of some things will decline, others will go up, but we don't expect to see a decline in the overall price level. That doesn't tend to happen in economies except in very negative circumstances. If you think about the basic necessities, things like bread and milk and eggs, prices are substantially higher than they were before the pandemic.

And so we think that's a big reason why people have been relatively dissatisfied with what is otherwise a pretty good economy. But those prices will not soften short of something like a recession. Things that are affected by commodity prices, like for example, gasoline prices have come way down. Some food prices that incorporate the price of commodities, grains and things like that, those can come down. But the overall price level doesn't come down. The Federal Reserve was empowered in the Great Depression

to regulate the economy by controlling the supply of money and setting interest rates. It also regulates commercial banks for safety, something still challenged by the effects of the pandemic. The value of commercial office buildings all across the country is dropping as people work from home. Those buildings support the balance sheets of banks all across the country. What is the likelihood of another real estate-led banking crisis? I don't think that's likely.

We looked at the larger banks' balance sheets, and it appears to be a manageable problem. There's some smaller and regional banks that have concentrated exposures in these areas that are challenged, and we're working with them. You believe it's a manageable problem? I think it appears to be. We're not going to see bank failures across the country as we did in 2008. I don't think there's much risk of a repeat of 2008. Certainly, there will be some banks that have to be closed or merged out of existence because of this. That'll be smaller banks, I suspect, for the most part. Just last year, there was a panic at the 16th largest bank. A Federal Reserve report blamed bank mismanagement,

but also inadequate supervision by the Fed itself. You seem confident in the banks, and yet the Silicon Valley Bank, second largest failure in U.S. history. Did the Fed miss that? So, yes, we did. And we forthrightly saw that we needed to do better. So we've spent a lot of time working on ways to make supervision more effective and also to adapt regulation to a modern context in which a bank run can happen so much faster than it could have even 20 years ago. Another economic hangover after the pandemic is a sharp increase in the national debt. 30 years from now, it is projected to be $144 trillion, or $1 million per household. How do you assess the national debt?

We mostly try very hard not to comment on fiscal policy and instruct Congress on how to do their job when actually they have oversight over us. But is the national debt a danger to the economy, in your view? In the long run, the U.S. is on an unsustainable fiscal path. The U.S. federal government's on an unsustainable fiscal path. And that just means that the debt is growing faster than the economy. I have the sense this worries you very much.

Over the long run, of course it does. Effectively, we're borrowing from future generations. It's time for us to get back to putting a priority on fiscal sustainability. And sooner is better than later. What would you say is the single most important factor for the future of American prosperity? With your permission, I'll name two things. One is, I think we need to just remember that we have this dynamic, innovative, flexible, adaptable economy, more so than other countries.

And this is the big reason why our economy has come through so well. The other thing I'll point to for the United States is really since World War II, the United States has been the indispensable nation supporting and defending democracy, security arrangements, economic arrangements. We've been the leading voice on that. And it is clear that the world wants that. And I would want the United States to know, people in the United States to know that this has benefited our country enormously. It benefits our economy so much to have this role. And I just, I hope we, I hope that continues. Jerome Powell has about two years in his current term as chairman. He suggested to us the likely time for the first interest rate cut would be the

middle of the year, a few months before the election. Your decisions inevitably are going to have a bearing on this year's election. And I wonder to what degree does politics determine your timing? We do not consider politics in our decisions. We never do and we never will. It's not easy to get the economics of this right in the first place. These are complicated, risk balancing decisions. If we tried to incorporate a whole other set of factors in politics into those decisions, it could only lead to worse economic outcomes. We simply don don't do that, and we're not going to do it.

We haven't done it in the past, and we're not going to do it now. There are people watching this interview who are skeptical about that. You know, I would just say this. Integrity is priceless. And at the end, that's all you have. And we plan on keeping ours. Suck is a chart-topping, history-telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America, decade by decade. Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more.

The promise is in the title, History That Doesn't Suck. Available on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. The number of migrants arriving at the southern border is unprecedented. Last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection recorded two and a half million instances of detaining or turning away people attempting to cross into the United States from Mexico. So what's the fastest growing group among them? Chinese migrants. Yes, you heard that right. Chinese. We saw large groups, including many from the middle class, come through a four foot gap at the end of a border fence 60 miles east of San Diego. The illegal entryway is a new route for

those hoping to live in America. Just after sunrise, we saw the first group of migrants make their way from Mexico, through a gap between the 30-foot steel border fence and rocks, ducking under a bit of razor wire and into the United States. We were surprised to see the number of people coming through from China, nearly 7,000 miles away. Careful, watch. Our cameras, and at one point, this armed border patrol agent standing 25 feet away, did not deter them. So, how old are you? I'm 20 years old.

This man, a college graduate, told us he hoped to find work in Los Angeles. He said his trip from China took 40 days. What countries did you go through? Thailand, Morocco, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua. Jeez. Thirty minutes later, a smuggler's SUV raced along the border fence and dropped another group at the same spot. And 30 minutes after that, another group. Over four days, we witnessed nearly 600 migrants, adults and children, pass through this hole

and onto U.S. soil, unchecked. We saw people from India, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. Many of the Chinese migrants who came through will end up asking for political asylum. Did you travel by yourself or with family or friends? No, just me. Just you. Yeah. The Gap is a global destination,

littered with travel documents from around the world. With the help of a translator, we learned a little about the Chinese migrants coming through. Teaching? You're a teacher? Oh my goodness. We also met a banker and small business owners. Some of the migrants made a grueling journey through Central America with dusty backpacks. But we noticed middle-class migrants from China arriving with rolling bags. They told us they took flights all the way to Mexico. Some flew from China to Ecuador because it doesn't require a visa for Chinese nationals,

then took flights to Tijuana, Mexico. The migrants told us they connected with smugglers, or what they call snakeheads, in Tijuana. And they each paid them about $400 for the hour-long drive that ended here, at the Gap. Why did you decide to come to the United States? It's hard to live there. Hard to find jobs.

What did you do? Did you work in China? I used to work in the factory. Now it's hard to work in the factory. Was this trip expensive? It's a lot of money to the U.S. Last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported 37,000 Chinese citizens were apprehended crossing illegally from Mexico into the U.S. That's 50 times more than two years earlier.

Many of the migrants told us they made the journey to escape China's increasingly repressive political climate and sluggish economy. This 37-year-old woman said China's COVID lockdown destroyed her childcare business. She left her two young children with family at home. And why did you decide to come to the United States? Why did you decide to come to the United States? Because there are many reasons. Many reasons.

For work? For work or for what? Not entirely for work. Not entirely? Okay, what reasons? Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom.

Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom.

Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. We wondered how all of these migrants knew about this particular entryway into California. The answer was in their hands.

How do you know about that? Oh, the wind? Okay, TikTok. Oh, you learned on TikTok. TikTok is a social media platform created in China. The post we found had step-by-step instructions for hiring smugglers and detailed directions to that hole we visited. We were struck by just how orderly and routine it all seemed. The migrants walked about a half mile down a dirt road and waited in line for U.S. Border Patrol to arrive so they could surrender.

How much property do you have here? The land they are waiting on is owned by 75-year-old Jerry Schuster, a retiree. The whole world seems to know there's a way in and it's on your property. They're all doing this. They're all doing this. When they come over here, they come with the suitcases. They come prepared with the computers, just like they got off a Norwegian cruise ship yesterday. Schuster owns 17 acres just north of the border fence and a quarter mile outside of Yakumba Hot Springs, California, population 540. You're an immigrant yourself.

Yes. Where did you come from? I come from Yugoslavia, and I left Yugoslavia. I went to Austria. I stayed there eight months, and I knocked on this door. I didn't bust theavia, I went to Austria. I stayed there eight months. And I knock when there's door. I didn't bust the door down to come over here. You came through the front door?

I came through the front door. And what do you think about this? They don't care. They come through the whole, like, they come into their own country over here. And nobody do nothing about it. Schuster says it all started in May. He went to investigate some smoke coming from his property and found migrants burning trees to stay warm. Today, his property looks like a messy moonscape,

littered with the trash and tents migrants have left behind. Have you ever just yelled, get out of here? Well, they say I, that was like four months ago, there was eight guys start knocking my trees and start burning my trees on the other side. So I told them, please don't do that. Please don't. They start surrounding me. I went home and I got my gun and I shoot the night they arrest me. They arrested you? Yeah, they arrested me. On your property?

Yeah, on my property. Just because I asked them not to burn the trees, not to knock the fences. And they arrested me. They put me in a police car and just protected my own land. Schuster wasn't charged, but his gun was confiscated. If you had to guess, how many migrants do you think you've seen come through here? Maybe 3,000 a week.

3,000 a week? I would say that, yes. Because this is ongoing deal. About two hours after these migrants arrived, we saw the border Patrol pull up, broadcasting recorded instructions in Mandarin. The migrants were driven to a detention facility near San Diego, where they are given background checks.

Some are interviewed. Typically, within 72 hours, they are released into the United States and can begin the process of filing an asylum claim. . Jacqueline Arellano has volunteered on the border for eight years, offering humanitarian aid to migrants. So I'm a native Spanish speaker. I have been able to rely on being bilingual

in doing this work for the duration that I have been doing it. And in this past year, I mean, there's been times that I've come to the sites and not spoken to a single Spanish speaker. She relies on translation apps to communicate with Chinese migrants. These people want to be picked up by Border Patrol. Why isn't this happening at a port of entry? That would definitely be the ideal situation, and people would much prefer to do so. It would definitely be much safer and more efficient. Unfortunately, there are barriers to people being able to seek asylum at a port of entry. One barrier is the phone app called CBP1.

Asylum seekers are supposed to use the app to make an appointment to enter the U.S. through a legal border crossing. As we saw last spring in Juarez, Mexico, the system is glitchy. Oh, yeah, and it gets stuck, right? Volunteers who work with migrants told us there's still a three- to four-month wait to secure an appointment at a border crossing. So is this a shortcut? It's really like the only one that they have. I don't even know that they would consider it a shortcut. For years, millions of Chinese entered the U.S. with a visa

that allowed them to visit, work, or study. But in the last few years, those visas have been increasingly difficult to secure as tensions between the two countries have grown. In 2016, the U.S. granted 2.2 million temporary visas to Chinese nationals. In 2022, it was just 160,000. So a lot of these folks may have come... Tammy Lin is an immigration attorney and has worked with clients from China for nearly two decades. If someone's not granted asylum here, will China then say, OK, yes, we'll take them back?

I haven't seen that happen, really. I think even back to 2008, a lot of the Chinese nationals that had failed asylum cases weren't able to get passports to be put on the plane to be sent back. So we can't send you back. Based on our review of data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, there are at least 36,000 Chinese who have been ordered by U.S. courts to leave the country. But China is notorious for not taking back its citizens, and the U.S. can't force China to accept them. So then what happens if they have a failed claim but they can't go back to China? That's a varied question. They're stuck in this limbo.

According to the Department of Justice, last year, 55 percent of Chinese migrants were granted asylum, compared to 14 percent for every other nationality. With the odds in their favor and a phone to guide them, there's little to discourage more Chinese migrants from coming through the gap near Jerry Schuster's place. Have you said to anybody, hey, there's this giant hole they're coming through, how about patching that up?

They know that thing is there. And we've all been telling them, hey, when this thing going to quit over here? You got to call Washington, D.C., that's what they say. So we did. U.S. Customs and Border Protection told us their agents don't have authority to stop people from coming through gaps like this one and can only arrest them after they've entered illegally. As for closing that gap, they said it is on their priority list,

but would require money from Congress. Next Sunday on CBS, the Super Bowl will, for the first time, be held in Las Vegas, a fitting venue given the prominent role gambling plays in sports today. America's recently brought its age-old love of sports betting out of the shadows and onto our phones, and this has created an all-time mismatch, pitting man against machine. Gamblers, overwhelmingly young men, versus gambling companies, armed with sophisticated AI, data, and engineering, enticing fans to make snap bets not just on games, but on every play within games. The early results?

Billions for gambling companies, leagues, and state governments. And a growing population of sports bettors struggling to defend against the rush. Boston is nothing if not a sports town. And when there's a game, odds are good there are guys like Billy, Andrew, and John at the local bar. They grew up playing hockey together. Now, in their mid-20s, they bond over beer, wings, trash talk, and lately, a new fixture of the fan experience. What do you guys bet on? Football or hockey.

Do you have a team? Bruins, Patriots. If you want to lose money, you bet on the Patriots. Winning and losing money. For millions of fans like these guys, it's one more reason to watch and enjoy sports. Big news! During games, promotions for sportsbooks like FanDuel and DraftKings are everywhere. You bet $5 to get $200. A 2018 Supreme Court decision opened the door for states to legalize sports betting.

You want to spread the money line. Cantilized by new revenue, 38 states and counting have done just that. I'll take the Pelicans. And Americans have spent more than a quarter of a trillion dollars sports betting. That's the GDP of Greece. Leagues have cashed in. Networks, too. Man, I gotta teach you how to gamble.

For decades, odds and point spreads were forbidden topics. Now, ESPN has its own sportsbook. Called it, baby. Full disclosure, when I work at the tennis channel, I sit here. The DraftKings Fund, download the app. So right now, I'm just looking at the... Back at the bar, casual social bettors like Billy, Andrew, and John revel in their wins. What'd you throw down?

$8 for $3.47. So you won $3.47? Yeah. Wait, you won that much? It's still early innings, and remarkably, there is no federal funding for gambling research, so data is scarce. But survey after survey confirms that of the 50 million or so sports bettors in the U.S., men under the age of 35 are far and away the biggest demographic.

For decades, leagues feared gambling would corrupt competition. So far that crisis hasn't happened. But the last five years have given rise to a surge in young gambling addicts. Joe Rosillo, now 26, says his problem started in high school. Then in 2022, sports betting apps came to his home state of New York. What impact did that have? It had a big impact. I've worked my whole life, so I got a check every week, but it would deposit right into

whatever app I was using. Were you interested in the game itself? I am a sports fan, but as the years grew on, you become less interested in the game itself and more interested in the result. And who needs a bookie when a fresh bet is just a swipe away? You know, you can wake up in the middle of the night, take your phone out, set an alarm for a match, maybe overseas or something like that. I would place a bet on anything, anywhere, at any time.

He'd sneak in bets at family functions. He'd delete the apps one day, reinstall them the next. To help get clean, a tech downgrade. This is the phone I use on a daily basis. You can't gamble on this phone. You'd say not too many apps on that phone, huh? No. I think people who aren't familiar might think of the typical gambling addict as, you know,

the middle-aged guy in a windbreaker who's betting his retirement savings. It's more prominent in the younger generation, I think, than ever. The sportsbooks and the commercials and the leagues themselves are making it look so cool to gamble and risk your money. There are distinct signs of trouble. According to a Siena College poll, which we can report for the first time now, of the young men wagering online, nearly half feel they're betting more than they should. In the five years since New Jersey legalized online sports gambling,

calls to the state's problem gambling helpline nearly tripled. The largest caller demographic, 25 to 34. This is a public health emergency happening and we're not talking about it yet. Harry Levant is a gambling addiction therapist and leading voice on the public health impacts of online sports betting. A decade ago, Levant was a trial lawyer whose gambling addiction was so fierce he used client money to fuel his habit, leading to his disbarment. In his current career, he's noticed today's desperate gambler looks and acts a lot different. I have patients who gamble in the shower. I have patients who gamble before they get out of bed in

the morning. I have patients who gamble while they are driving. There are no guardrails. We scientifically know the human brain, the risk-reward system for a young man, isn't fully formulated until you're 25. Where are the young men getting the money to gamble like this? I have patients, some of whom are college students, who have gambled federal student loan money. I have young patients who have gambled away inheritances.

LeVant showed us what gambling today entails. It was an NFL Sunday, though on DraftKings, the betting options extended far beyond football. Soccer, basketball, hockey, motorsports, rugby, volleyball. And there was tennis. Pedro Rodenas playing Alfredo Perez in a challenger qualifying match in Charlottesville. Those are two names I've never heard before. Who is betting on this match? Two guys who are nowhere near the top hundred. Because John, this is not about tennis. They're not designing them for the fans of qualifier tennis in Charlottesville.

They're designed for people who want more action. The opportunities for action are literally limitless. Live in-game micro-betting allows users to wager on every pitch, serve, and snap. But if you come down here, you can bet on the current drive of the Green Bay Packers. Will it be a punt, a touchdown, a turnover, or a field goal? Using algorithms powered by AI, DraftKings refreshes the odds constantly. The common fan can't possibly calculate whether it's a good bet or a bad bet,

much less in real time. Where are these numbers coming from? How do they know what the odds of Green Bay losing a fumble are? We don't know that. They have access to all of the stats combined with artificial intelligence and the ability to predict what will draw the action in. Matt Zarb-Cousin is a leading gambling reformer in the UK. He is also a recovering gambling addict.

I would say understand what the nature of these companies really is. They are big data companies that are extractive. Zarb Cousins successfully lobbied for stricter gambling regulations in Britain, limiting how betting companies advertise and how much gamblers can wager. He says the UK, where gambling's been legal for decades, offers a sobering glimpse into what he believes is a crisis headed straight toward the U.S. There's lots of opportunities to gamble in Britain. You assume it's safe. You don't realize how easy it is to get addicted to that stuff. Addiction is intensified,

he says, by how much the gambling companies know about each user. Recently, Zarb Cousin was able to use Britain's public information laws to access data the betting company Flutter, owner of FanDuel, had on a UK customer. That data was used to tailor offers and push notifications to keep the guy in action. Where'd you learn? So about 93 different data points they had on this individual were when they bet, what offers worked, what inducements worked. On this particular one, he played slots for three to four days straight. They knew the life stage, the customer life stage he was at. So, win back, they described it.

So, people that have given up gambling for a while, and they're trying to get them to come back. There's also like 2,514 deposits in a year, which is about seven a day. So, these gambling companies that know when we're most impetuous, that has reams and reams of data on us, what kind of matches that for the adolescent male? It's not a fair, exactly, it's not a fair wager. Do they have enough data to pinpoint potential problem gamblers?

Oh, without a doubt, yeah. They know the people that are addicted. Flutter insisted to us that the company does take steps to protect their term, vulnerable customers, sometimes banning them outright. The two largest sportsbooks in the US, DraftKings and FanDuel, said the same, though declined to provide specific instances

when they've done so. We had arranged to speak to DraftKings about all this, but abruptly they pulled out of our scheduled on-camera interview. So we came to Washington, D.C. to meet Bill Miller, president of the gambling industry's chief trade group, the American Gaming Association. Take out our phone, 24 hours a day, a few swipes. How do you reconcile that with the fact that this entertainment has the potential to addict users. The addiction element of, are people addicted to their phones, which is kind of a common phrase, I don't believe that there is an addiction to mobile betting any more than there is an

addiction to utilization of your phone for any other reason. You don't think adding a layer of bettingding makes the phone more addictive than just tooling around Instagram? No. Every clinician we've spoken to has said, we're noticing a rise in problem gambling. There are a lot more problem gamblers now by every metric than there were pre-2018. I would concede to the fact that there are more known people with gambling problems because we in the gambling industry are flagging those people.

The illegal industry doesn't flag any of them. Miller told us sportsbooks look at betting patterns to spot problem gamblers, but acknowledged that a uniform, industry-wide policy on that is still a work in progress. There is problem gambling. It is a real problem. Whether it's gotten bigger or it's just become more noticeable because sports betting is legal, I think is an unknown. Really? My view absolutely is we need to make sure that we are giving people the resources they need to mitigate this issue. Yet, given all the high tech designed to get gamblers onto the sportsbook, for those seeking to quit,

they're often directed to a glaringly old-school solution, a 1-800 number. $150 bonus if you... It is a dangerous approach. Why? Because it takes the entire onus, puts it back on the individual to take an addictive product like gambling and micro-betting,

deliver it in light speed with the use of artificial intelligence, and then say to people, but now use this responsibly, it is wrong. And it's very similar to what happened with tobacco. Harry Levant doesn't make that analogy casually. Recently, he paired up with Dick Daynard, a law professor at Northeastern University, an architect of the first major lawsuits against the big tobacco companies. Along with Mark Gottlieb, another public interest lawyer at Northeastern, they are preparing to wage war against mobile gambling addiction. You made a name for yourself fighting big tobacco.

What do you see as the overlap? First of all, we're dealing with an addictive product. We're dealing with an industry that will still defend sometimes on the basis that it's really the smoker who's making the choice. So we have that exactly with the gambling industry. Following Daynor's tobacco playbook, in December, they filed the first in what they say will be a series of lawsuits, suing DraftKings in Massachusetts for deceptive advertising. Claims DraftKings says it, quote, disagrees with. The group is also lobbying Congress to enact federal regulations. They say the current mishmash of state-by-state policies just isn't working.

This is not the temperance union and you're trying to outlaw gambling. We have seen, certainly with tobacco, a lot of rules to control the way these products are promoted. And we'd like to see that with these products as well. Right now, it's sometimes described as the Wild West, right? Because there's almost no controls at all. Safe to say, when the Supreme Court opened the floodgates to sports betting in 2018, it didn't anticipate AI-powered odds on every snap or tailored push notifications engineered to keep bettors betting. That decision was only five years ago.

I know. That's the frightening thing. What's it going to look like five years from now? I think these products have the potential to become significantly more addictive and dangerous in a very short period of time. What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered.

Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. Now, an update on Ingenuity, the tiny helicopter so appropriately named. Its mission ended on Mars in January, almost three years and 200 million miles from home. A stowaway on the undercarriage of the Perseverance rover. As the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mimi Ong told R. Anderson Cooper in 2021, there were doubts that Ingenuity would ever fly.

A lot of people thought it could not be done. Because it's really counterintuitive. I mean, you need atmosphere for the blades to push atmosphere to get lift. In its 72 flights, Ingenuity delivered breathtaking images. One final image showed the shadow of a broken rotor after a surface strike a world away. I'm Scott Pelley. Next Sunday, CBS Sports covers the Super Bowl.

We'll be back in two weeks with another edition of 60 Minutes. The first season of Georgie and Mandy is a bona fide hit. in two weeks with another edition of 60 Minutes. I only told Mandy. I only told Mom and Dad. That's everybody. So, quick summary. Laugh at Georgie and Mandy's first marriage with all episodes now streaming on Paramount Plus and returning new CBS Fall. Yes, yes, also yes.