Morning Brew Daily - Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe

Episode Date: February 6, 2025

Episode 513: Neal and Toby chat about the deadline of Trump’s resignation offer to federal workers and whether the legality of the deadline will hold up or not. Then, banks are able to sell off $5.5B in debt backed by X, thanks to rejuvenated investor interests for the Musk social media company. Meanwhile, Tesla continues to struggle in European markets as sales drop double-digits in Germany, France, and the UK. Also, Neal shares his favorite numbers on US wealth, women talking more than men, and a very expensive violin. Lastly, a roundup of headlines from the day. Subscribe to Morning Brew Daily for more of the news you need to start your day. Share the show with a friend, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Check out https://wise.com/business for more! Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow All investing involves the risk of loss, including loss of principal. Brokerage services for US-listed, registered securities, options and bonds in a self-directed account are offered by Public Investing, Inc., member FINRA & SIPC. Public Investing offers a High-Yield Cash Account where funds from this account are automatically deposited into partner banks where they earn interest and are eligible for FDIC insurance; Public Investing is not a bank. Cryptocurrency trading services are offered by Bakkt Crypto Solutions, LLC (NMLS ID 1890144), which is licensed to engage in virtual currency business activity by the NYSDFS. Cryptocurrency is highly speculative, involves a high degree of risk, and has the potential for loss of the entire amount of an investment. Cryptocurrency holdings are not protected by the FDIC or SIPC.  APY as of 1/16/25, offered by Public Investing, member FINRA/SIPC. Rate subject to change. *Terms and Conditions apply. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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pwc.com slash U.S. slash brew AI. That's pwc.com slash us slash brew AI. Good morning Brew Daily show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, a fork in the road. Will government workers take Doge's offer

of deferred resignation? Then Tesla's sales across Europe took a nosedive as Elon Musk dives deeper into the region's politics. It's Thursday, February 6th. Let's ride. There's been so much talk about government efficiency here in the U.S. But over in the Czech Republic, they're absolutely chewing through red tape, and that's all

thanks to some cost-cutting beavers. Here's the story. So there's this nature park where local authorities have been trying to build a dam for seven years to restore water areas. But the project has been frustratingly held up over getting the necessary building permits to start construction. Enter a family of eight beavers who in two days built a dam that humans have been trying to set up since 2018, and it was in the perfect spot. One environmental officials said beavers always know best. The places where they build dams are always chosen just right, better than we can design it on paper.

They estimate that the beavers who have now become famous save the government $1.2 million. That's Doge Dunright. You know who has no time for bureaucratic delays, it is beavers. Fun fact about beavers, when they create dams, they also create special pools that are conducive to growing their favorite food, which is this leafy green shoots. So they aren't just building a dam. They are also building a farm at the same time. So look at them stimulating economic activity.

But here is my galaxy brain take kneel. Those beavers actually just destroyed $1.2 million of GDP for the Czech Republic, doing construction without a permit. So maybe it's time to rethink how we calculate GDP to include unpaid labor from animals like beavers. Now a word from our sponsor, Wise Business. Neil, between us to who is the more responsible one? Well, you once showed up to work without your computer, so I'm going to go with me.

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visit wise.com slash business. That's wise.com slash business. Own it all. Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly Big Board Buckslot machine by Aristocrat Gaming, Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is giving one person a $1.6 million dream package.

The biggest prize in Yamaba's history. Club Serrano members can earn daily instant prizes and secure a spot in the finale May 29th. Don't pass go and own it all. Only at Yamava, celebrating its 40th anniversary. UN. Details at Yamava.com must be 21-20. Please gamble responsibly. Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro. Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. Day marks a big test for President Trump and Elon Musk's plans to dramatically shrink the federal workforce. It's the deadline for more than 2 million federal workers to decide whether they will accept the deferred resignation offered to them.

To recap how we got here, last week, most federal employees were sent an email with the subject line, a fork in the road. It gave them the option to resign by today and still get paid for another eight months until the fall. It's one of the centerpieces of the Trump administration's push to call the federal workforce. It remains to be seen how many people will actually take the offer. So far, the Trump administration said that at least 40,000 employees have taken the deal, about 2% of the federal workforce. That's much lower than the goal of a 5% to 10% reduction set out by the administration. And one hang up that could be keeping federal workers from leaving their jobs, it's unclear whether this move is legal. Three unions that represent more than

800,000 federal workers have filed the lawsuit seeking a restraining order to halt the deadline. Or, in more practical terms, the employees might be hesitating to resign because they're not sure whether they can trust the government to keep paying them and make good on this promise or what their job prospects might look like after resigning. So a whole lot of question marks, but a big day for the millions of people employed by the government. Yeah, you have started to see people warning federal employees to not accept the offer because one possibility is the workers don't get paid the full term and then file lawsuits against the government saying, hey, wait a second, you were supposed to pay me this. But then if the actual offer in the first place was unlawful, then there's no legal recourse against something that wasn't legal in the first place. So yeah, there's a couple of things that this offer potentially violates.

One is the Anti-Deficiency Act. This is a law that prevents the government from promising money that in excess of what Congress has allocated. And remember, Congress has only funded the government through mid-March. We're going to have another one of those big, you know, budget meetings, not through the end of the fiscal year, not through the end of December where these payments would go. So they're saying we can't even, you can't promise money that hasn't been allocated yet. So that's one issue. And then there's this other, you know, federal provision that says you're not allowed to pay federal workers on paid leave for over time. 10 days. And the idea is you don't want to, you know, pay federal employees for not working. It's

actually a very dogean law if you think about it. So those are the two kind of legal issues that go against this fork in the road offer. Right. And that March 14th date, the government would shut down, in which case federal agencies wouldn't be funded and employees would be furloughed. So that is a major question mark. I mean, employment lawyers, their phones must be ringing off the hook. And I think from what we understand the general consensus is that they're advising employees to not take the offer based on all of the big legal questions that you raise. Administration pushes back saying that Trump signed an executive order, giving agencies more leniency into providing more administrative leave for federal workers in order for

this to comply. So big questions here. And another one is that how many of these workers would have resigned anyway? I mean, if you look at the national attrition rate, natural attrition rate for the government workforce, it's 6% a year. So 2% is lower than that, obviously, and how many of these workers would have been a part of that 6% turnover that the federal government has anyway. Right. A lot of people said, mainly the people who are leaving already had other job offers waiting for them. Because remember, even though 20,000 workers sounds like a lot, that is well within that, you know, 6% attrition rate that you mentioned.

And that being said, the White House has said that the number of deferred reservations is rapidly growing. They do expect a big surge in these last 48 to 24 hours. We are right. I mean, people procrastinate these. It's like when you send a party invite, no one replies until the very end. So it is true that you might see a huge spike today. Yeah, so the fork in the road email was sent last week, but now we are really at that juncture. Lost in Elon's infiltration of the federal government is the fact that he is still operating multiple

very large businesses, one of which is trending in the right direction, the other not so much. First up, the social media platform X is suddenly looking a lot healthier than it did a year ago. For a while, it looked like the exit path for the Wall Street banks that funded Elon's acquisition of Twitter was going to be a turbulent one. His controversial moderation strategies led to an advertiser exodus, which caused the platform's value and the loans Wall Street held to plummet in value. So Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and others started shopping around to offload those loans.

But since Trump's election win, investors have changed their tune on X, and as of yesterday, the banks were able to sell $5.5 billion in X debt for around $97 on the dollar, up from the $3 billion at $0.95,000 they initially expected. Neil, this still isn't exactly a healthy company, X, is still struggling to break even. But the combination of Musk's Washington Connects and the growing intertwining of X with XAI, his artificial intelligence company, has investors, again, and banks breathing a sigh of relief. Yeah, this debt sale is a very interesting education in how leveraged buyouts work.

So we know that Musk paid $44 billion to buy Twitter at the time. Of that $44 billion, banks provided $13 billion in financing. Once the acquisition went through, now they owned all of this debt in this new company. Typically, when banks finance an acquisition, they quickly offload that. They don't want to hold that debt for long. They quickly offload it to other investors. might be interested in investing in the company that they just helped take private. So typically banks will shed this within months. Like they already have buyers lined up. This, in this case,

I mean, it's been over two years. That's because these loans were underwater. This company fired 80% of its staff and advertisers had been pulling away. Its finances were in the dumps. Now that it's creeping back up, Musk wrote in a January email that we are barely breaking even, I guess is seen as a positive. So there's certainly momentum around this company a little bit due to Musk's relationships with the president. So that's why banks were able to get maybe face value for this loan to dump it to investors who were pretty eager to buy into this company. Another thing, too, it makes the banks that did take the risk on Musk look even better here. So you look at the names Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Barclays. These are the banks

that lent the funds to Musk to complete the acquisition. And they're looking kind of smart now because, one, they've been collecting these hefty interest payments. And then two, a lot of people would say, oh, those loans are super underwater. But they just sold for 97 or 98 cents on the dollar. So they did recoup a lot of their investment. And hopefully, why they maybe took the risk in the first place is that Elon owns a lot of businesses. He has a lot of influence when he is looking to Wall Street to fund something else or for help on something else. He'll remember those banks that did, you know, take the risk on him.

So suddenly, even though maybe a year ago, you would have said, not a great decision to fund this acquisition. Now they're looking better if Musk is willing to do business with them going forward as like the people who were by his side during this like X acquisition. The other business Elon runs, less we forget, is Tesla. And that is not going as well. Car sales data from the first month of the year is coming in from Europe. And it looks like Europeans did dry Tesla January. Sales are way down in France, Germany and the UK. As Europe emerged as a major headache for the carmaker on the heels of its recent financial miss. Tesla's sales were flaky as a croissant in France dropping 63% from a year earlier.

German sales went from bad to worst, with a 59% drop in January. In Britain, where Musk has been beefing with Prime Minister Kerr-Starmor, sales are down at 12%. Sweden is another problem area after a mechanic strike against Tesla led to demand sliding 44% worse than the 38% drop it saw in neighboring Norway. Neil, all across the continent, Europe is souring on Tesla. And we're all wondering why this is. There are a couple of factors that could be at play. One is that Tesla is gearing up an updated version of its model Y, which is coming in March. So consumers might be waiting on that. The other is increased competition.

We know that China has made a lot of inroads in Europe, not in the United States, but there are a lot of Chinese EVs that have undercut the market there. The other is certainly it's hard to measure, but Elon Musk has been certainly dabbling in European politics. He's vocally supported an ultra-far-right ultra-nationalist party in Germany,

and we saw a huge plunge of Tesla cars. And Germany's also been beefing with the UK Prime Minister. Kier Starmerys used the platform we just talked about, X, to be this megaphone for him to have a very strong opinion and controversial opinion in European politics, it's unclear whether this is a consumer response to his meddling in their affairs.

And I do think you have to dig deeper here and see are EV sales just falling across the continent? In some cases, that is the case. In France, EV sales fell 6%. But, I mean, again, Tesla's sales fell 63%. So it's falling at a much quicker rate. But then you look at the UK and you're like, oh, Tesla just fell 20%. But EV sales were actually 35% higher in January 2025 compared to the year earlier. So, yes, the entire pie is growing, but Tesla is, you know, getting to eat less and less of it.

So it's definitely a combination of all those factors. But Europe is still an important market for Tesla. I mean, it's an affluent sector of the world. They do sell a lot of cars there. So you don't want to see these, you know, 50, 60% drops from these European markets. So to start the show, we talked about Elon Musk's involvement in government. And then our next story was about Elon Musk's businesses. Obviously, it raises huge questions of conflicts of interest.

The White House press secretary was asked about these conflicts of interest yesterday and what could be done to prevent Elon Musk from enriching his companies and himself through his involvement and the government. She said this is Caroline Levitt. She said that Elon Musk himself will determine if there are conflicts of interest. So there are no outside checks on this. Elon Musk will reportedly recuse himself from any conflicts of interest should they arise as determined by him. Yeah, people have pointed out that self-determination of conflict of interest in itself is a conflict of interest.

So it's conflict of interest all the way down. You know what? Isn't a conflict of interest? That's Neil's numbers, which is coming up next. It's time to refresh your yard during spring backyard days at the Home Depot. Get low prices guaranteed on propane grills starting at $179. like the next grill three-burner gas grill, or get $50 off a select Weber Spirit grill,

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On every other metric, we scored something like a D or worse. It's not a report your mom would want to hang on the fridge. First, the good. Since the 1990s, U.S. economic growth has been the envy of the world, and we've outperformed most of our peers in terms of innovation and productivity. For instance, in 1990, US GDP was 28% higher than the euro area. Now, the gap is 80%. But on other metrics, less related to the economy and more related to health and well-being and culture, the U.S. is a significant laggard.

According to the New York Times, we have the lowest life expectancy of any rich country. That was not true in the 20th century. We have the highest murder rate of any rich country and the world's highest rate of fatal drug overdoses. Trust in the federal government is abnormally low while youth depression is abnormally high. As one historian at Hillsdale College summed it up, were so wealthy but so unhappy.

This committee that released the report did not actually go as far as to explain these trends because you said it's a diverse group of 14 people. So none of them could really agree on why our economy is doing so well, but all these other indicators are going the other direction. So the New York Times kind of called them all up individually and asked them, hey, what do you think is going on here? And they said that they identified five themes here.

one, the U.S. prioritizes GDP above all, a lot of our government policy, a lot of things about our culture, you know, are geared towards prioritizing economic growth, maybe at the expense of some other things. Then also, another theme is a lot of us are pulling apart. We're becoming more isolated. We've talked about this on the show a lot. We don't go to, you know, church anymore. You don't go to meetings anymore. There's less gatherings. Part of it is the reliance on technology. Three, the United States is still a very unequal place or in equal place because, yes, maybe the entire economic pie has grown, but potentially that's just been concentrating at the top more. And then four, I'm almost done there. Affluence itself.

Yeah, a lot of the problems we have is reflected by the very affluence we have. So think about it. If you have an abundance of few that might lead to a rise in obesity, if you have rising incomes, you can buy smartphones, which means you don't hang out with your friends as much anymore. And then five, this one was my favorite. And it was just bad luck that we have gone through a lot of things recently, once in a lifetime financial crisis, once in a lifetime pandemic, once in a lifetime, you know, bout of inflation as well. So some historians and some of these people who worked on it said maybe we're just in a crummy period and we will emerge out of it. Some people pushed back against that. But those were kind of the five themes that they identified that.

Toby's numbers. Toby's tallies right there. Ladies and gentlemen. I hijacked your segment there. It was great. I learned a lot. Okay, for my second number, here's a question that's asked frequently. Who talks more? Men or women?

Many people would say women, and that'd be correct for the most part. According to a large new study out of the University of Arizona, researchers found that women spoke on average about 3,000 more words per day than their male counterparts. But there's a catch. This is only holding truth between the ages of... This only holds true between the ages of 25 and 65. Significant gender differences did not appear in the study's other age cohorts,

such as in adolescence or older adulthood. This was a closely watched study because it was from the same researchers who published a viral paper in 2007, or whatever the virality was in 2007, that pushed back on the stereotype that women gab more than men. That study found that men and women speak roughly the same number of words per day. But that 2007 study was quite limited in scope, so over a decade later, the same researchers decided to blow up the sample size and geographic reach to get a more comprehensive sense of chattyness differences between genders. And they found that women do talk more than men during the life stages of early and middle adulthood. Yeah, and the researchers didn't want to go as far as to saying this is exactly why, you know, they are speaking a little bit more during this 40-year stretch. but one possibility is that those tend to be the child rearing years.

And if you assume that women are typically the primary caregiver, they might be speaking more to their children than men do that time. So that is potentially the reason for that 3,000 word gap. But they also said, look, there is a ton of variation between individuals as well as between genders. The study's least talking of person was a man who's broken estimated 100 words a day, not a man of very few words, and then the most talkative person was also a man who spoke more than

120,000 words a day. I would like to get those two in a room together and see what happens. We all know some chatter boxes, and we love them. For my final number, what could be the world's most expensive musical instrument is up for auction

tomorrow at Sotheby's in New York? No, it's not Toby's recorder from middle school. It's a violin made from the famed Antonio Stradivari 1714, and it could fetch anywhere from $12 million to $18 million. At the top end of the range, it beat out the current record holder, another Stradivarius made in 1721. So why is this violin so remarkable?

First, the guy who made it, Strativari, is considered the best violin maker ever, even if he was toiling in a shop 300 years ago in Italy. Violinists rave about the richness and tone they can get from his instruments. Top soloist Joshua Bell compared it to being a. painter and having access to thousands of colors to paint from rather than dozens of colors. Second, this violin has gotten a halo effect by the people who have owned it before. Violin virtuosos, Joseph Joachim of Hungary and Sihoen Ma of China, who gifted it to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston upon his death. Toby, this is the most fit a fiddle you'll ever see.

It absolutely is. I love this story because, one, it is very rare people are saying it's like seeing a living fossil, there's only 650 left in existence, but it's also the best. It is people likened it to saying, imagine if the best iPhone was invented 300 years ago and all the advances since haven't improved upon this one design. I encourage people to go onto YouTube too because there's some, you know, violinists who have tested out like a $10 violin, $100 violin, and then like a million dollar shot of various violin. And it does. Like even to my untrained ear, you're like, wait a second, And there's a lot more going on here.

So I do think this is a case where it's absolutely worth it to be one of the most expensive instruments ever. And so I wonder who's going to buy it. I know. Can Griffin step in here? I don't know. You know, he's the guy who buys the T-Rex and he buys the U.S. Constitution. But, you know, players can't afford it. So usually you have these big-pocketed philanthropists or donors who come in buy these expensive Stradivari

and then lend it out to virtuoso performers to pay. play it at Carnegie Hall or Boston Symphony Hall or whatever. But I think one of the coolest parts about this is that it was donated to the New England Conservatory. So they're going to use this however much it's sold for, $18 million to fund scholarships for their school and hopefully train a new generation of amazing classical performers, which is near and dear to my heart. Okay, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Google has become the latest big tech company to pull back from DEI in the Trump era. It told employees yesterday, that it is scrapping its goal of hiring more workers

from historically underrepresented groups and reviewing some of its DEI programs, such as releasing annual diversity reports. It is a major reversal from 2020 when after George Floyd's murder, Google, pledged to increase the share of leadership representation of underrepresented groups by 30% by 2025. According to its latest diversity report,

5.7% of its U.S. employees are black and 7.5% are Latino, a smidge higher than 3.7% black and 5.9% Latino four years earlier. Yeah, part of this is obviously driven by recent court decisions and executive orders from, you know, the current administration. They are aimed at curbing a DIY in the government and with federal contractors. Google does work with the government across various, you know, things. They aren't alone either. Meta also eliminated the team overseeing its diversity efforts last month.

And then also Amazon told employees in December that it would wind down. some of its diversity initiatives, so it does look like this is where the winds are blowing in the big tech universe. Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency has a new target in mind, the Medicare and Medicaid payment systems. He and his team are combing through payments from the agency targeting what they consider potential fraud and inefficiencies. The team is specifically focused on canceling DEI contracts across the Department of Health and Human Services, including those with major contractors like Deloitte. CMS assigned a to veteran employees to collaborate with those to ensure appropriate access to their systems.

But Neil, the Wall Street Journal called CMS the nerve center of the nation's health care economy. It outlaid $1.5 trillion the last fiscal year or about 22% of the federal total. So this is a bigger task and target than any Doge has taken on so far. Totally. This is the big Kahuna because if you look at agencies that Doge has taken aim at already, U.S. aid accounts for less than 1% of the federal budget, another other doors they've been knocking on. I mean, even the federal workforce as a share of how much the government spends is tiny. But when you start looking at things like Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, that is where you're talking about 22% of the federal total budget, things like that.

So this is where if you were to find a lot of places to cut, this would be the place. the problem is, is a very sensitive program along with Social Security. These two are to account for, you know, two-thirds of the federal budget. At the same time, they're politically a third rail. Like, these are programs that people absolutely need, absolutely want, and you can't really touch them. So we'll see what Doge does. And, you know, there have been concerns raised about whether these unelected people getting into sensitive documents. And when you're talking about health as well. Are they able to see health markers for individual people and officials have stressed that Doge access is read only and they said this across all these agencies that these guys

have tried it to target. Finally, someone in Pennsylvania is living large after pulling off a heist of one of the most valuable substances in the world right now. No, they didn't steal any silver or gold. Instead, the thief made off with 100,000 eggs from the back of a trailer in Antrim Township. Police are looking at surveillance footage and tracking down potential witnesses to try and crack the case, but so far they don't have any leads. In my career, I've never heard of 100,000 eggs being stolen, 12-year law enforcement veteran Megan Fraser said yesterday. According to the police, the eggs are worth about $40,000, which means we are talking about a felony here. Neil, either someone is capitalizing on record high wholesale egg prices or some teens are about to egg a lot of houses. We should have seen this coming.

I mean, whenever a commodity or a product spikes in price, you always see a corresponding spike in thefts. It happened with olive oil and grease, butter in Russia, copper wire, catalytic converters from cars. And now, in hindsight, it's so obvious that eggs would be targeted. I mean, now do you have to put eggs in an armored car to protect them? They're so valuable. Another question here is the logistics, right? Eggs are not so easy to move. How do you take 100,000 eggs?

and, you know, move them without cracking a few. I think, well, they definitely cracked a few eggs, but I think they were just on a trailer that they unhit. So it was already, you know, packaged for them. But I was surprised that it was only $40,000. I mean, this is 100,000 eggs. We're talking about each, if you go to Whole Foods, you know, it's a dollar for an egg per dozen.

But obviously, this is like wholesale prices that we're talking about here. So I just know, I'm in my mind. Someone just drove by solid ton of eggs. You're like, wait a second. That's a lot of money right. there and made off with it. But it's looking to be, you know, the perfect crime right now. Police are stumped at who did this. They don't have any footage about it. So this could be just like one of those mysteries that go down in history. And media outlets are having so

much fun with it. The New York Post said that thieves poached the eggs from a truck, leaving Pete and Jerry's shell-shocked. Cleveland.com's headline was PA Police Scramble to crack the case. So you can roll your eyes at those. Okay, let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Thursday. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to MorningBrewdaily at morningbrew.com. And if you're enjoying the show, pass it along to a friend, family member, or coworker whose morning news consumption currently consists of scrolling Instagram reels.

For a more specific sharing idea, Toby's here with some inspo. I want you to share the podcast with someone via email with the subject line, fork in the road. Either listen to MBD and you can stay their friend or don't and break up all contact with them. All right, that's a little intense, but share the pod, see what happens. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Lute is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Yucena Ogu is our technical director.

Scoop Stardaris is on audio. Hair and makeup has been a little chatterbox this morning. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.