Morning Brew Daily - Disney Streaming > Parks & Mortgage Rates FINALLY Drop
Episode Date: August 8, 2024Episode 383: Neal and Toby explain why Congress is looking into creating legislation that would crack down on payment scams on Zelle. Next up, Disney reported earnings and their streaming division is ...raking it in but their parks may be losing cash. Then mortgage rates are finally falling and Neal shares his favorite numbers involving VP investments, treasury bills and the number of free colonoscopies that one olympic gold medalist is getting from their home country. Then finally, it has been 20 years since the great Dave Matthews Band tour bus poop disaster in Chicago. Checkout https://beehiiv.link/morning-brew-daily and get a 30 day free trial and also 20% off 3 months with code BREW Get your Morning Brew Daily T-Shirt HERE: https://shop.morningbrew.com/products/morning-brew-radio-t-shirt?_pos=1&_sid=6b0bc409d&_ss=r&variant=45353879044316 Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow 00:00 - Olympic Coke 3:00 - Zelle Scams 8:45 - Disney Earnings 12:30 - Mortgage Rates Drop 18:00 - VP Investments 20:30 - Buffett T-Bills 23:00 - Olympic Perks 25:20 - DMB Poopiversary Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
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Good morning, Brew, Daily Show.
Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, did you accidentally send $200 to a scammer on Zell?
The government is trying to help you get your money back. Then the American consumer is still behaving
a little bit like your high school ex in sending mixed signals. It's Thursday, August 8th. Let's ride.
Here is a handy tip for when you're done swimming in a body of water with iffy levels of pollutants,
drink a Coke. After all, it's what all the Olympians are doing after racing in the Sen this
week. Following their competitions in the potentially dirty river, many triathletes and swimmers
swear by a postgame Coke, not Diet Coke, regular Coke, as a way to rid their body of potential
contaminants. According to them, Coke's acidity works as a quasi-bleech for the digestive tract
and can flush out any strange bacteria they might have picked up in the river. Toby, have you
heard of this Olympians drinking Coke and not like Gatorade? It doesn't seem to square up.
I have heard about this.
The bleach your intestines part is more urban legend than fact
because your stomach is already very acidic,
especially if you're a healthy athlete.
But you do see Coke all over endurance events.
Like if you go to these 100-mile races, 200-mile bike races,
you will see athletes down in Coke
because the part that actually really does benefit you
is that when you're exercising, your glycogen levels,
your sugar levels go way down.
So when you see a Coke that has 39 grams of sugar in it,
tons of tablespoons of sugar, that just screams out to you.
And it tastes really good to replenish those sugar levels.
So that part of it is true.
Does beer function in the same way?
There's no sugar in beer.
That actually dehydrates you more.
They actually make goos, you know, those goose that marathon is eat in Coca-Cola favor?
Because sometimes you're just craving that very intense flavor as well.
So, Neil, on our little five-mile run that we do after this,
let's drink a little bit of Coke.
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Regulators are turning up the screws on Zell, the Venmo rival, that's been accused of being a hotbed of frauds and scams.
According to the Wall Street Journal, regulators are investigating some of the biggest U.S. banks,
such as J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo for their response to customers who dispute transactions made on Zell.
For some background on Zell, it is a money transfer service that,
was created in 2017 to compete with the likes of Cash App and Venmo. It's owned by a consortium
of seven of the largest U.S. banks, including the ones I mentioned above. Zell has grown quite a bit
since it was founded to be even bigger than Venmo. Last year, people sent $490 billion through Zell
compared with $230 billion through Venmo, which is its closest rival. But allegations of ramp
and fraud and abuse has Dogg Zell. Customers have complained that they were duped into sending money
to scam artists and have been met with a too bad by the banks.
J.P. Borgon, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America reimbursed about 38% of customers reporting unauthorized
transactions in 2023, which is down from 62% in 2019.
Toby, Zell's been in the hot seat for a while.
This investigation could crank up that heat even more.
Yeah, how big of a problem is this?
Because I think anecdotally, everyone's heard about some friend or some cousin accidentally sending
money to a scammer.
and according to the three largest lenders, Bank of America, JPMorgan, and Wells Fargo,
customers lost around $370 million via Zell, but the banks only reimbursed around $100 million of that,
so it's leaving customers to kind of eat the rest of the difference.
So that, in the whole context of things, is a relatively small number compared to the $806 billion
that flowed through Zell, but still, it's a real problem for consumers, and so that's why
the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is looking into this issue because right now customers are saying
there's not a lot of recourse when I do accidentally fall for one of those scams.
Right. So what is the legal recourse that customers can take and what are banks forced to do via
the law? And it really depends on whether you're subject to a fraud or a scam in a fraud.
Money is transferred out of your account without your authorization. So say you're hacked and
someone sends money and you look at your Zelle account and you're like, where did $200 go?
I didn't approve of anything.
Then you are allowed a reimbursement.
The banks have to reimburse you.
But in the case of a scam where you authorize the transaction because you were duped,
then they don't have to.
There's a loophole in the law that they don't have to reimburse you for when you authorize
a transaction.
And that's what regulators and lawmakers are looking into to say, even if you do authorize
a transaction, but you were scammed or duped into it, then the banks must reimb.
reimburse you, and that's really the tension of this. Yeah, and persuading the bank that you were a
victim of a scam is the difficult part. I mean, there's evidence of people, one person, a Chicago
resident was literally robbed at gunpoint, had it on security camera of these assailants making
her send money via her JP Morgan app to them on camera. And it still took this very long process
that local news got involved in order to convince the bank that she hadn't authorized the transaction.
So what are people suggesting you do about this?
A lot of people are saying that make the protections more like what you get with credit card markets.
If you just look at the reimbursement rates on Zell versus credit card payments,
Zell, you're looking about a 26% reimbursement rate.
But for credit card payments, that jumps up to 47, debit card payments, 36%.
But there's obviously downside to that as well, because right now, Zell is a free service.
And if you were to make these transactions subject to reimbursement,
you might have to kick in money to afford about this.
These are unintended consequences where you can't enjoy the benefits of cash and the benefits
of having the credit card payment model as well.
So a lot of people are saying, think about two sides of the coins here.
You can't just have your cake and eat it too.
Well, the reason that these platforms have become so popular with scammers is because
they're free and they're very easy to use and you can send money in an instant and you can't
get it back, which makes it so awesome for when I have to pay you for dinner, but also it makes
it really attractive to fraud. But this industry is just absolutely booming. I mean, back in
2018, less than half of all Americans use these peer-to-peer payments like Cash App, Zell,
and Venmo. And now nearly three-quarters of consumers use them. I mean, payments on Zell alone
exceed total ATM withdrawals. So they're just ubiquitous at this point. So we'll see what
regulators have to do with particular fraud on Zell.
But meanwhile, the banks are pushing back and they're like, guys, 99.9% of all transactions
are completely koshered.
The amount of fraud is just a rounding error.
It's such a small margin of the amount of money that flows through our system.
Plus, like, it's just, you know, think about it as cash.
I think they want to take the more educational approach and be like, if someone, you know,
if you hand a $100 bill to someone and they just take it.
take off and run with it.
Like, that's on you.
Yeah, it's not on the banks to reimburse that.
Disney reported earnings yesterday, and as Michael Scott once said, oh, how the turntables have
turned, its media business, which includes its troubled Disney Plus streaming platform,
isn't the ugly stepchild of the company anymore.
In fact, it's its park business that is now facing slowing demand and falling profits.
Why, the switchup?
Disney streaming business, which includes Disney Plus, Hulu, and ESPN Plus, turned a quarterly
profit for the first time ever.
it attributed the park slowdown to the shaky economy taking its toll on travelers.
In other words, Disney customers are spending their money to go see Inside Out too, but won't
shell out for a trip to Orlando. These consumer contradictions are something that we're
seeing play out all across the economy and corporate America as more earnings reports trickle
in. But first, Neil, what do you make up of the switchup in momentum around Disney's business
units? Well, one of the main reasons why the streaming service is so profitable now, not so
profitable, but has turned a profit for the first time ever is just simply price hikes. When you raise
prices, people have to pay more. Your profits get a little bit bigger. You bring in more money.
I mean, when Disney Plus debuted in 2019, it costs $6.99 a month. After price hikes last week that
Disney just announced, it's hiking prices again. That basic plan will cost you $15.99. So $7 to $16.
That is one recipe to make more money off of your streaming business.
They've also taken a page out of Netflix's book, and I've been cracking down on password sharing as well.
So that has led to a boost in profitability for this unit.
But if we just want to zoom out a little bit, because we've talked a lot about the American consumer and consumer spending,
because it is a very big part of the jigsaw puzzle that props up the economies, everything from restaurants,
hotels, concert venues.
If the consumer keeps spending, these are the places that are allowed to stay.
afloat. But what seems clear right now is that we're almost seeing like this split economy in
many ways. On one hand, you have these wealthier Americans still driving very robust spending,
but then you have on the other end of the spectrum some households that aren't keeping up.
I mean, data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York just showed that total household debt
is increasing. It increased by $184 billion in the first quarter. So some people are falling behind
a little bit. But we've talked, even within companies like Disney, we are seeing multiple different
data points that are showing either the economy is doing great or it's not doing great,
and we're seeing that across earnings reports.
Yeah, I mean, the head of Disney's theme park business said that exactly because their domestic
theme parks in Orlando and California were not doing so hot over the summer.
Meanwhile, their international ones were booming, and what he said was the lower income consumer
is feeling a little bit of stress.
The high-income consumer is traveling internationally.
So that may help explain just a bunch of those confusing earnings report.
on the state of the consumer that we've gotten this week.
And another earnings report that came out yesterday,
which also speaks to perhaps a week in consumers,
that Airbnb said it saw lower demand in the summer for vacation rentals,
which is usually its busiest and peak quarter.
It had its worst stock wipeout in ever,
and it warned of lower consumer demand going forward for people traveling around the country.
So just another data point.
Then Maersk comes out just a few hours later,
They are the biggest shipping company, and they're like, yeah, we don't see any signs of recession.
People are buying stuff.
Our ships are completely loaded with goods.
So, again, it's just this total head fake where you're not exactly sure where the consumer is,
but it's very important.
Every earnings report seems to be a referendum on the economy at the time when we're talking
about a recession potentially looming.
Neil, is that flowers by Miley Cyrus, I hear?
Because it is looking a lot like May of 2023 in here, at least when you look at the 30-year
at U.S. fixed mortgage rate.
It fell to 6.55% last week, its lowest level since May of last year.
It's caused a surge in demand for both homebuyers and current homeowners.
Total mortgage applications rose about 7% last week compared to the week before,
and they are now at their highest level since January.
Even if you were lucky or unlucky enough to find a home in the last year or so
amid sky high mortgage rates, you are probably looking at refinancing right now.
Applications to refinance a home loan jumped 16% week over a week,
over a week, and we're 59% higher compared to a year ago.
Again, this is a relatively small base of unlucky folks who are refinancing because the majority
of borrow borrowers today are still sitting very pretty with sub 5% rates.
But still, Neil, as mortgage rates begin to ease up just a tad, the big question is,
will this act as a plunger to the massively clogged up housing market?
Yeah, we'll see.
I just want to get into why we're seeing a dip in mortgage rates in the first place.
it's because investors are scooping up bonds right now, specifically the 10-year treasury note.
After those market meltdowns of Monday and the sign that the Fed especially is going to cut rates,
bond prices move inversely to yields.
So more people buying bonds mean yields go down, and mortgage rates tend to track the 10-year
treasury yield.
So lower 10-year treasury yield, lower mortgage rates.
So in essence, just by signaling that the Fed is going to cut rates soon, it has already
cut rates. The interesting part, though, is that it's not leading to a massive surge in mortgage
applications yet. They increase just 1% for the week. And the issue is that if the Fed is promising
that they're going to cut rates, then a lot of people are saying, well, I can stick it out for
another month or so. And if rate cuts are on the horizon, that means the mortgage rates will fall
even further. So what's the rush? You will probably be able to get a better rate soon. So it hasn't
led to this big increase in sales yet. That being said, for sale inventory is beginning to increase
gradually. There are more houses coming onto the market. Rates are falling, so people can wait.
They probably are waiting, but I think we're about to see a little bit of a thawing in the housing
market. A little bit, and it's so needed, but they have to go down much more for any sort of
activity to kickstart because 90% of mortgage holders have a rate below 6%. And what did you say
it was now? Like 6.5%. So they really have to go to.
down even more for any sort of meaningful movement. And you need two sides of this equation to work,
too, because you need buyers coming off the sidelines being like, all right, like we're at 5.5%.
I think I can do that. And meanwhile, you have this big lock-in effect that's going on where you have
people sitting on homes that would need to give it up and get a new mortgage to get another home.
And they're saying, well, why would I do that when I'm sitting on a two or three percent mortgage?
And now it's still at 6 percent. So you need both the buyer and the seller to get off the sidelines and
start participating in this market again. And it's going to require a little bit more of a drop in
mortgage rates. The good news is, like you said, that might be coming because remember I said,
mortgage rates sort of track the 10-year yield. Well, right now, they're 2.6 percentage points higher
than the 10-year yield. And sort of historically, that's been 1.7 percentage points higher. So it looks
like there is a gap that could be filled. And one might expect mortgage rates to go lower.
and then, you know, we'll see what happens when the Fed cuts rates and by how much.
That will totally impact where rates end up.
But right now, there are still extremely high.
And it's not really making a lot of movement in the housing market.
Up next, I could hardly concentrate on the first half of the show because we have Neal's numbers coming up next.
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Welcome to Neal's numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that
will have you outsmarting the Zell scammers.
My first number is zero, which is how many stocks, Democratic Vee,
nominee Tim Walls owns, according to public disclosures. It's true. The Minnesota governor
doesn't own a single stock, nor does he or his wife own mutual funds, bonds, private equities,
or other securities. He hasn't even diversified into Dogecoin. Okay, but he must have real estate
assets, right? Nope, the couple sold their home in Mancato, Minnesota after he moved into the governor's
mansion in St. Paul. Literally, the entire investment assets belonging to Walls and his wife,
Gwen, a teacher, are state pensions. This is highly unusual for elected officials, especially
ones on presidential tickets. At a time when lawmakers such as Nancy Pelosi are more scrutinized
than ever for their active stock trading, it is a rare sight to see a politician without
a fidelity account. Toby, quite a contrast between Walls, who doesn't own any stocks and the other
side of the ticket, with J.D. Vance being a multi-millionaire, former venture capitalist, and Donald
Trump owning real estate properties around the world.
We're almost seeing two sides of the American Dream coin in a way with both candidates for BVP.
I mean, a lot of people have Rags to Riches stories like Vance.
I mean, he literally went from rural Appalachia to becoming a multimillionaire.
So to a lot of people, that's the American Dream.
But on the other side of the coin, you have the spotlight on the very much less wealthy walls.
He represents a much more attainable, stable, middle-class version of the American Dream.
It's less sexy for sure, but it's probably more realistic for a lot of people.
a lot of people maybe find themselves in a similar boat to Wall.
So it is interesting to see these contrasting sides of the American dream.
Yeah, I mean, Walls is likely, has the least wealth of anybody on a presidential ticket than Harry Truman many, many decades ago.
And one thing that he did was actually introduced the Stock Act, which was in 2012 signed by former President Obama, which was aimed at curbing insider trading.
A lot of critics say that Act did not do anything and, you know, stock politicians are trading more than ever before.
Meanwhile, if you look at Kamala Harris, she also has a very boring investment profile, just like mostly retirement accounts, not doing any active trading.
The one impressive thing about Kamala's about her investment profile is that she has a 2.6% mortgage rate on her house.
We just were all envious to that.
That is pretty dang good. Meanwhile, yeah, you mentioned J.D. Vance. He has, he was a former venture capitalist. He owns over $100,000 worth of Bitcoin, and he has more than 100 investments in startups, which we'll see how those pan out.
Sticking with the investing theme for my second number, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway owns an astonishing amount of U.S. Treasury bills.
In fact, he owns more than the United States Federal Reserve. Buffett bought up $230 billion worth of T-Bill
and fixed maturity securities in the first six months of the year, compared to the $195 billion
the Fed currently owns.
Now, Buffett controls 3% of the entire Treasury bill market more than any other company
or institution.
Buying up T-bills is Buffett's way of putting his Gringott's-level cash hoard to use.
He is called T-bills the safest investment there is because they are short-term securities
backed by the U.S. government.
Their maturities range from four weeks to a full year, and in this period of high interest
rates, they're paying out anywhere from 5 to 6%. So for someone with a lot of cash like Buffett,
there are worst places to park your money. And did I mention he has a lot of cash? After selling more
stocks last quarter, including loads of Apple, Berkshire Hathaway has amassed a record cash pile
of $277 billion. 5% on that ain't bad. Right. And let's look into it, actually. If he invested in
three-month treasury bills yielding 5%, $200 billion in cash would generate around $10 billion a year,
just literally sitting and doing nothing.
I mean, that is just a staggering number to think about that your little cash pile is generating
$10 billion.
Of course, it is a little nervy to see Buffett be such a large net seller.
He's been a net seller of equities for seven quarters straight.
Obviously, him cutting his apple steak so much set off a lot of warning bells.
Who knows how much it contributed to the market wipeout we saw on Monday.
But it is staggering.
When you're comparing your cash stores to the literal Federal Reserve, that means you're doing
something right and you're working on a very massive scale.
My final number is the list of prizes
Filipino gymnast Carlos Edriel Yulo has been
promised for becoming the first male Olympic gold medalist
in the history of the country.
Okay, here it goes.
173,000 in cash from the Philippine Sports Commission.
$52,000 more in cash from the country's House of Representatives.
A free house plus a fully furnished two-bedroom condo
valued at $415,000.
A lifetime of free ramen.
free buffets and free meals from numerous local businesses,
a lifetime of free cookies from a shop called Cookies by the Bucket,
an iPhone 16, and last but not least,
a lifetime of free colonoscopies and gastroenterology consultations,
but only once he turns 45, he's currently 24.
Yes, for athletes from some countries,
the awards for winning a gold medal go a lot further
than some hardware hanging around your neck.
The Filipino government and brands looking to make a splash
are handsomely rewarding their country's newest hero.
He's never going to have to pay for a colonoscopy again.
But there's a wide range of what countries hand to their medal winners.
Hong Kong gives out the most cash $768,000 to its athletes who win gold, followed by
Singapore and Indonesia.
The United States hands out $38,000.
But that can run up quite a tab, given that we've won 27 gold medals so far at the Olympics.
Right.
I mean, other countries struggle to even win a single medal.
So when you see that United States number, you say, wait, Hong Kong's paying way more for
their medals, almost half of, or three quarters of a million dollars, but it's all about
perspective and scale and how many medals they're bringing in. And I love this. I mean, why not
reward the best of your country? Why not reward people who are doing historic things? I think some
other interesting non-cash prizes, Iraq and Austria, they've both rewarded Olympians with land or
real estate Malaysian athletes who win medals, just receive cars. They just hand them a new car keys.
In 2021, Indonesia's badminton gold medalists received five cows and a meatball
restaurant, which is pretty great.
Is there anything that you, if you're coming back from the Olympics, triumphant, is there anything
that you would have on your list of riches that you'd like to bring in?
Honestly, I just want, like, attention.
I don't know if a physical good would be good.
I just worked for eight, four, eight, 12 years.
Just like, put me on the front page of the newspaper.
Please just don't forget about me.
I work so hard.
But maybe the best reward of all comes from South Korea.
And that is, if you win a gold medal, you don't.
have to be conscripted into the army. So that is a very like real deal thing. It's not like
getting a meatball restaurant or some cows. This is like you don't have to go to the army. So it's a
very big deal when South Korean male athletes compete in big competitions like the Olympics or the
Asia Games because if they win a medal, they don't have to go to the army. And that is just huge.
I mean, BTS, the boy band, they all, they kind of had to break up because they had to be
conscripted. 20 years ago today, an event that is seared so vividly into Chicago-based listeners'
minds that two decades is not enough to dull its hold on the city. 20 years ago today was the Dave
Matthews Poop Bus incident. I'll explain it for everyone outside the Windy City. On August 8, 2004,
the tour bus carrying the Dave Matthews band dumped 800 pounds of poop on people taking a cruise on the
Chicago River. If you read through an oral history of the event, you get harrowing firsthand a
of people saying how at first they thought it was a street cleaner passing overhead or just
water falling from the bridge.
But then the retching started.
One man recalls a man on the back of the boat saying, that's not water, buddy, that's urine.
Of course, dumping poo over the river is definitely illegal.
Doubly so when there's an unlucky boat passing underneath.
And even though Dave Matthews was on the bus, the driver was at fault resulting in 18 months
probation, 150 hours of community service and a $10,000 fine.
But Neil, this is such a.
big memory for many Chicagoans, the day the river ran brown. Yeah, I don't think many,
many people outside of Chicago know about this, but if you talk to people in Chicago,
like, this is such a seminal part of their history. And I just love, like, urban lore like this,
where if you're from a particular city, you're like, yeah, this incident will just always
be with us. And I'm sure every city has its own. But like, it's been 20 years since this thing.
And it's still going strong. And perhaps it's even only picked up even more just because of the
incongruity of Dave Matthews and this septic tank and the people just happened to be on the ground below
and just like listening to the stories of people who were actually there.
Like they were very much traumatized months a year into it and only later were they allowed to start
laughing at it.
And now they're like, yeah, we're expecting phone calls and texts from all of my friends, you know,
sort of making fun of the fact that I was, you know, I was a part of this sort of weird history
of Chicago.
I like it too because now there's a competitive plaque honoring the occasion as sort of an official remembrance you on top of the bridge.
There's also a nearby bar that's hosting a don't drink the water dance party to celebrate the event.
So you're right.
With time, healing comes and a lot of businesses are jumping on it and having fun with it.
And a lot of people interviewed around this too saying it's something very Chicago and taking pride in this.
It's like they liken it to Malort.
It's horrible, but it's there.
So I'm sure every city has that.
I had never heard of this date Matthews poop incidents,
but it sounds absolutely awful.
I can't imagine anything rooting my vacation more so than poop raining on my head.
Meanwhile, the Chicago River itself is gorgeous.
I love how much activities on it.
It snakes through the city and the architecture around it.
Those buildings are just stunning.
So in a way, it brings attention to the Chicago River
and hopefully gets more people out on that beautiful piece of water.
speaking of like dirty water as we have just like for the past few weeks.
All right, let's wrap it up there.
Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Thursday.
Got something weighing on your mind after listening.
My therapist says it's important to let it out.
So send an email with your feedback to morning brewdaily at morning brew.com.
Let's roll the credits.
Emily Milliron is our executive producer.
Raymond Lou is our producer.
Olivia Graham is our associate producer.
Ed Lewis is our technical director.
Billy Menino is on audio.
So after the show, hair and makeup needs a Coke.
Devin Emery is our chief content officer
and our show is the production of Morning Brew.
Great show today, Neil.
Let's run it back tomorrow.
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