Morning Brew Daily - The Fed Cuts Rates Again & Can Oracle Deliver for Investors on AI?

Episode Date: December 11, 2025

Episode 733: Neal and Toby talk about the Fed’s third straight rate cut for the year, but with three dissenting votes that show a divided Federal Reserve. Then, Oracle is under pressure from its investors to show eye-popping revenue from its AI data centers but so far, they’re not impressed. Plus, Department of Transportation Sean Duffy and RFK Jr. have a pull-up competition at an airport. You read that right. Meanwhile, Neal shares his favorite numbers on a self-checkout study, golf & politics, and our brain development.  Check out https://www.linkedIn.com/mbd for more. 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. Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.swap.fm/l/mbd-note⁠⁠⁠  Watch Morning Brew Daily Here:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow⁠ 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 for Daily show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today the Federal Reserve is at war with itself. Then the

government wants to put gyms inside of airports. It's Thursday December 11th. Let's ride. Good morning and happy Thursday. Anyone who spends time around kids knows the 6-7 trend has gotten way out of hand, so much so that

In-N-Out Burger has retired the number from its ticket ordering system. In response to throngs of kids camping out at the burger chain and waiting for order number 67 to be called, then going animal-style when it is. In-N-Out confirmed that last month, it got rid of 67 entirely, so if you order after ticket number 66, you'll be number 68. Then the person after you will be ticket 70 because apparently people can't handle the number 69 either. Toby, the youth, they broke in and out. At this point, just ditched the entire 60s.

They are cursed. Now, this is interesting, though, because Wendy's is taking a different approach to dealing with 6.7. They are leaning in and selling 67 cent frosties. So two different schools of thought here. If the ultimate goal is to kill the meme, I think Wendy's is doing a better job of that because you know what's not cool? Brands, brands getting in on what the cool kids are saying. The fact that in and out is not naming it.

at 6-7 going forward. I think it's like a Voldemort effect where you're giving it more power. So I do think if you want to never hear the word 6-7 again and have kids going crazy, you got to start doing brand promotions around it. That's the first time I've heard that, the Voldemort effect. It's basically

the opposite of the stricent effect. Get stricent and Voldemort in the same room. That is a dinner party that I want to go to. And now a word from our sponsor, LinkedIn ads. Toby, do you have any holiday traditions? Yeah. Every year my family and I gather around, find a live for and I'm going to stop you right there.

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To the surprise of no one, the Fed cut rates another 25 basis points at their meeting yesterday, barking three straight reductions to bring rates to their lowest level since 2022. But under the surface, chaos rains. A rare triple descent, the first since 2019, so there's still an internal tug of war over the risks posed by higher inflation and lower employment. Not only were there three dissents, but there were three dissents on both sides with one Trump-aligned official voting for a jumbo-sized half-point cut in order to spur on the labor market, while two others voted for no change in rates at all in order to stave off inflation. After the announcement, all eyes

turned to Fed Chair Jerome Powell's press conference, his last before Trump announces his successor. After his customary, good afternoon, Powell turned some heads by saying, recent employment data may have overstated by about 60,000 jobs a month, given that payroll growth has been averaging about 40,000 jobs per month since April. Uh-oh, that means employment growth has been non-existence, which explains why the Fed felt comfortable cutting rates again despite persistent inflation. As for what's next, we got some grade A Fed speak to pour through. The central bank said that they were considering the, quote, extent in timing of additional adjustments to the target rates for the federal funds, which many took as a sign that the Fed

is content to see how the economy evolves before committing to any additional cuts. Neil, from a triple descent to J-POW's last hurrah, some excitement for a rate cut that was all but guaranteed. A lot of excitement, but I always start here when we talk about the Fed because it's really important to remember. The Fed basically only has two responsibilities. They're called mandates. It aims to get unemployment as low as possible, and it wants to keep inflation running at a 2%

pace, which is its target. The problem is that those are both problems. And when you try to tackle one, you risk making the others worse. Unemployment was up to 4.4% in September. That was up from 4.1% back in June. And then prices, as measured by the Fed's preferred, gauge of inflation rose 2.8% in the year through September. So they have these two different mandates in conflict with one another. And Jerome Powell gets up there and says, look, I can actually see both sides to this argument. I can see both sides to cutting rates. I can see on the other side of sticking with what we have. He said everyone around the table at the Fed agrees that inflation is too high.

We wanted to come down and agrees that the labor market has softened and that there is for the risk. Everyone agrees on that. Where is the difference? What the difference is is how do you weight those risks and what does your forecast look like? Well, the central bankers in that room, they don't agree. And we got some historic levels of disagreement among the Fed officials. Powell's quote from yesterday I thought was very illuminating. said a very large number of participants agree that risks the upside for unemployment and the

upside for inflation. So what do you do? You've got one tool. You can't do two things at once. It's a very challenging situation. So it speaks to exactly what you're talking about. Like, hey, we can either raise rates, we can leave rates where they are or we can cut rates. It's not, it's a very blunt tool when you have this dual mandate as you described. The general message that Powell was putting forth, though, was that the labor market is weaker than expected. That is why we are getting a cut. So despite all of those factors going into this decision, the overarching theme is that, hey, the labor market is in a precarious place, which is why we felt comfortable doing this despite some dissent within the Fed. Let's talk about what a rate cut means for your

wallet. Well, one thing that I noticed specifically when the Fed cuts rates is I have this high yield savings account. Bragg. Well, when the rates were high, you were getting 5%. As everyone probably listening to the show knows. Well, as soon as the Fed cuts rates, I get an email from them being like, well, your rate has gone down. And it's been doing that over the past couple of months. So if you are in a high yield savings account or any savings account, it's likely that your interest rate is going down. You're probably wondering, well, the Fed is cutting rates? What does that mean for mortgages? Is our mortgage is going to finally be more affordable? The answer is not really. Mortgages are still above 6%. And that's because while the Fed's

interest rate does influence broader borrowing costs across the economy. It's not a one-to-one comparison. So when the Fed cuts rates, it's not like the mortgage market follows lockstep, because those are influenced by things like the 10-year treasury yield and other things going on in the macro economy. So in general, you can say that when the Fed lowers rates, that that means that borrowing costs will come down across the economy and at the same magnitude as the Fed's rate reduction. And remember, I kind of call this Powell's last hurrah. He's, he's, His term actually ends in May, but remember, there's been all this political backdrop of Trump has been demanding faster rate cuts. He's been kind of hinting at ousting Jerome Powell before his

term ends. He's raised questions about Fed independence. This last hurrah, basically, Powell went out saying, I really want to turn this job over to whoever replaces me with the economy in really good shape. I want inflation to be back down to 2%. And I want the labor market to be strong. That's all I want. All of my efforts are to get to that place. So that was kind of his parting word saying, I'm doing my best here. This I gave it everything I had, despite all the turmoil that swirled around him. He goes out saying the duo mandate was what I came in for. It's what I'm still trying to do, and it's what I'll continue to do till May. When Oracle last reported earnings three months ago, the tech giant gobsmacked investors by reporting a revenue pipeline of $450 billion, seemingly

cementing its status as one of the runaway winners of the AI revolution. Its stock shot up more than 20% that day, briefly making its co-founder, Larry Ellison, the richest person in the world. But ironically, Oracle couldn't predict what lay ahead. Yesterday, the company's stock fell more than 11% after its latest earnings disappointed, continuing a slump that's raised alarm bells for the AI trade more broadly. Revenue increased 14% from a year ago in Q3, missing projections, but it was rising spending on data centers and AI infrastructure that's got investors a little spooked. Capital expenditures, a proxy for data center spending, came in at $12 billion for the quarter, nearly $4 billion more than the street anticipated.

And look, other companies are spending way more on AI infrastructure than Oracle. The difference is they don't have the debt problems that Oracle has. The company has been on a data center building binge financed by debt that has it burning cash at a rate that makes investors uncomfortable $10 billion in negative free cash flow last quarter, to be exact. On top of that, the majority of Oracle's big backlog of revenue that I mentioned turned out to come from one company, OpenAI, which itself has invited many tough questions about the sustainability of that business model. As Jones trading strategist, Michael O'Rourke put it, I always thought it was dangerous for the company to take on significant leverage while tying

its future to a startup. It looks like more investors are joining in his skepticism. Yeah, the core issue here is this massive CAP-X. Oracle is spending more on AI data centers than any company not named Amazon or Microsoft. And unfortunately, they do not make as much money as an Amazon or Microsoft. Oracle execs did nothing to dispel those fears either. They said that CAPX for fiscal 2026 is expected to be 15% higher than the already high $35 billion. The company estimated back in September. The Wall Street is concerned that they won't be able to try.

translate that into revenue quick enough, or the worst case scenario is that it doesn't materialize as revenue at all, depending on what goes on in open AI. And so when you're taking on such a heavy debt load to fund this AI infrastructure buildout, that is when alarm bells start to sing. It's so fascinating, though, that the very thing that propelled it to such a big stock run up is now the very thing that's weighing it down, which are these ties to open AI. And what's also been an interesting development is that when you're looking at companies to gauge the health of the AI sector. It's in Video 1A, but Oracle 1B, that's why these earnings are so important. That's why we're talking about it, because Oracle for decades had been a pretty

boring but very successful company in database software. And then all of a sudden they get into this cloud computing market, and they've been super successful with that. And their stock has a huge price run up. They have all these customers, specifically Open AI, buying all of this compute from Oracle. But now, at the same time, token, they rise with the tide, but they also fall with the tide. So it's very interesting how Oracle has put itself at the center of the AI trade because of its relationship with OpenAI, but also its centrality in many of the circular deals that have raised concerns of a bubble. I thought it was funny too. CEO Clay McGurik say, don't worry, guys, we have a plan. His quote was

we have some interesting models that we've been working on. One of them is that customers can actually bring their own chips. And in those models, Oracle obviously doesn't have to incur any capital expenditures up front for that model. So it's literally BYOC. They're saying, trust us, guys, it's fine. These people will just pack their bags full of their own chips. We'll just set up all of the stuff around it, the server racks, etc. But the BYOC model is going to be totally fine. So it's BYOB is out. BYOC is in. Moving on, running it to your gate to catch your connection isn't the only exercise you'll be doing at the airport, at least if the Department of Transportation has its way. Trump's Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy,

this week laid out his vision for how a pot of grant money should be allocated to upgrade airline terminals. Some use cases he floated at a press conference flanked by Health Secretary RFK Jr. included many gyms in terminals so travelers can work out during layovers, expanded nursing pods for new mothers, family exclusive security lanes, as well as more healthy food options. Duffy's press conference was punctuated by RFK and Duffy, busting out some pull-ups in Terminal 2 at Reagan National Airport to demonstrate that getting the blood moving while traveling is possible with the right equipment. The money for these protein-fueled pipe dreams comes from the Biden-era infrastructure investment in Jobs Act, which allocates $1 billion annually through 2026 for terminal projects. And Duffy is advocating to use that billion to advance his make-travel family-friendly again initiative. Neil, usually when people travel, they're looking to pull up a seat to the bar, not a pull-up bar.

Rule number one of gyms and airports is if you do put a gym in an airport, then you also need a locker room as well. Many pointed out that there was this inherent conflict between what the Department of Transportation is a messaging around air travel. Right before Thanksgiving, Duffy comes out and says, we want to make air travel the golden age again, which means that all of you who are going in PJs and sweatpants, I want you to dress up and look the part a little bit more when you're traveling. And that was to stem a wave of bad behavior. And at the same time, he's saying, well, let's put gyms in airports. And so what are you supposed to do?

Wear a gym or wear a suit on your airplane or to the airport or where some Lou Lemon. Seems like those are an inherent conflict. One thing others also pointed out was this initiative, while, look, I think we all kind of want to get the blood pumping at the airport, especially before a long flight. kind of misses the mark when it comes to what people who are traveling by air really want. So there was this Ipsos poll in 2025 earlier this year. When it comes to what people were wanting in terms of changes from commercial air travel, Americans overwhelmingly want lower fares and fewer fees.

68% rank that as their top priority. And when you go to two and three, more comfortable airline seats and speedier security or customs lines. So those are really what Americans want when it comes to the air travel. It's get me in and out as fast as possible and make me pay a little less. Not necessarily. Let's put an equinox in Terminal 2. I was surprised, though. RFK did 20 pull-ups in this press conference, which is more than I can certainly do.

I think it is a bizarre idea, though, to say, hey, here's a dedicated area to go work out in the gym. People are already stressed enough. People are already sweating. You're telling me that you want some people in your way ripping out pull-ups while you're just trying to make your connection. The overarching idea is just make airports a little bit of a healthier place because right now you're going to get a lot of fast food. You're going to be very sedentary. It's not necessarily conducive to a healthful life.

So that was the general thrust of this. But you're right. When you look at what customers are actually asking for, none of this is top of the list. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with Neal's numbers. 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 and bring big flavor to your backyard. Then set the scene with Hampton Bay string lights that bring it all together.

Shop spring backyard days for seven days at the Home Depot. Now through May 6th, Exclusion supplies to homedipo.com slash price match for details. Welcome to Neal's numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will give you a Lisa Simpson level air of superiority. For my first number, the concept of treating yourself has gotten a little too literal in the self-checkout aisle. A new lending tree survey found that more than one quarter of people who've used self-checkout say they've intentionally taken an item without scanning it.

That is a massive 12 percentage point increase from the 15% who knowingly stole stuff in 2023. There are some clear demographic differences in who swipes more. Millennials and Gen Z were the most likely to admit they steal at self-checkout while just 2% of boomers cop to it. And men were more than twice as likely as women to shoplift. But here's where the numbers get a little contradictory. When asked why they stole from self-checkout, 47% of people said it was the current financial environment that made it tough to afford essentials, while 46% blamed higher prices. At the same time, people

in households making more than $100,000 were the most likely to say they sold from self-checkout at 40% compared to just 17% of people making less than $30,000 who said they did the same. For whatever reason they stole, many said they don't regret it. 31% of self-checkout thieves say they don't feel remorseful and 55% think they'd do it again. The moral landscape is certainly shifting as those last two stats certainly show because 35% also say that self-checkout is quote, unpaid work in taking small items, feels like compensation, which is kind of a wild justification, saying. I'm doing the bagging here.

I deserve a little bit of payment, so I'm going to steal this pack of gum. The inherent contradiction, though, is that it is, on the average, richer people doing this, then saying that it's because of the cost of living. It's mostly men that are doing it. It's mostly people that hypothetically

should be able to afford this stuff that are paying. So maybe it's more of a sign of a moral shift than anything that's going on with the cost of living right now. And it's also wild to me that places like CVS and Target are locking de, deodorant toothbrushes up behind these glass cages when it's really self-checkout. That's the source of their theft problems.

So maybe let's open those cages back up. All right, for my next number, professional golfers perform significantly worse and earn less when they play alongside someone they disagree with politically. And it has implications for your workplace too. A study by business researchers at UC Berkeley and Yale analyzed over 25,000 player tournament rounds

for more than 700 PGA Tour tournaments between 1997 and 2022. Through social media posts, voter registration records and interviews, they categorized the golfers into Republicans and Democrats, then looked at how those golfers performed when randomly assigned to play

with political allies and opponents. It made a big difference. Stripping out all other variables, the researchers found that golfers who played in politically mixed groups scored 0.2 strokes worse per round and faced a more than 5% reduced likelihood of making the tournament cut, a key threshold for potential earnings.

The economic hit to golfers ranged from about $13,000 to over $23,000 in each of the Tours 47 tournaments. So why does disagreeing with someone politically make you a worse golfer? It's not like you're debating immigration policy while competing in a tournament. Well, just think about the stress you had at Thanksgiving dinner when politics wasn't necessarily discussed, but it was the elephant in the room. One of the studies authors said simply being aware of politically different others and shared spaces creates psychological tension that disrupts performance. The researchers say that these

golfing findings can be extrapolated to other workplaces like sales teams or trading floors, where political disagreements can reduce productivity by raising proximity-based anxiety. Anxiety, not even related to politics, anxiety related to anything in golf makes golfing harder. So if I have a single other thought in my mind, of course I'm not going to play as well. So when you are so close to someone that you know their political views, which the authors said that is often the case on the PGA tour. You're traveling around with these people for most of the year, so you do know what they believe.

So if you are very close to them and you're just aware of it, it just gets in the back of your head. The studies authors were also giddy with the fact that golf created a perfect landscape, perfect backdrop for this study because the pairings are randomly assigned, which is, you know, the gold standard whenever you're trying to do a randomized trial like this, they said, We didn't even have to design the study. The PGA Tour did it for us, which was why they were so happy to dig into this data. Fascinating, too, that the places of closest proximity was where the strokes gained showed up the most,

putting and driving when you're standing right next to your playing partner. On the fairways, when you can distance yourself, you're in your own world. You don't see as much of that performance dip. So fascinating study from top to bottom. I'm just imagining Scotty Schaeffler sitting over a putt and being like, I can't believe what this guy thinks about Obama. Exactly. Exactly.

And then misses it wide, right. All right, for my final number and a shocking twist that explains much of my behavior in my 20s, you are technically a teenager until age 32. At least your brain is. A new study published in the journal Nature Communications looked at the brains of around 4,000 healthy people, age zero to 90, and found that adolescence in terms of your brain development doesn't end until your early 30s. The researchers actually found four distinct turning points in your brain structure, dividing the lifespan into five distinct phases.

The first is childhood from zero to nine, then adolescence from nine until 32. Adulthood is the longest from 32 until about 66, early aging until 83, then late aging from 83, until whenever you kick the bucket. The fact that adolescence lasts so long shows how human braids take a much longer time to develop than other animals, some of whom can stand upright

not long after they're born. You might think of a 21-year-old as an adult, but these scans show that there's still another decade until the brain is fully stable. Toby, suddenly Santa Khan makes a lot more sense. It is a great justification. Anytime you have a bonehead mistake, say, I'm still developing, you know,

I'm still in my adolescent period. Let the brain catch up and take time, diving into each one of these epochs, these eras, whatever you want to call it, it is fashioning what your brain is doing and what is optimizing for. When you're zero to nine, you are consolidating a ton of neural connections

and actually over time as you age from zero to nine, your brain becomes less efficient because it's sort of pruning some of these connections to find the ones that are most important for living, which explains the three-year-old chess player that we recently talked about. It's why when you are three, you can become a rated chess player

because your brain is just firing so quickly. But then eventually your brain says, whoa, whoa, we don't actually need to be able to make connections at this rate. Let's start dialing things back a little bit. So that was just fascinating that the brain actually becomes less efficient during that key time because it starts out almost too efficient.

Whatever you need to say to justify losing to a three-year-old interest. Okay, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Congrats, you're being noticed on LinkedIn by U.S. immigration authorities. According to a notice published online, the Trump administration is planning to require tourists from dozens of countries, including Britain, Australia, France, and Japan to provide a five-year social media history as a condition of entry to the U.S. citing public safety. officials are calling it a mandatory data element of the electronic system for travel authorization form,

which people from about 40 countries can use to visit the U.S. for a short stay without a visa. The proposal, which is not yet final, would create more barriers for international tourists at a time when they're already avoiding American shores. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, the U.S. is the only one of 184 economies that's expected to see a decline in international visitor spending in 2025. And of course, what's coming up is the World Cup. Anytime we're talking about any of these changes, a massive influx of people from waiver, visa waiver nations are going to be coming to America for the 2026 World Cup. So what is going to happen if they have to put their social media up for consideration. It does speak to the expansion of online surveillance that we've had under the Trump administration. It's one of the key policies they actually campaigned on, but to see it extend to social media, a lot of people, are up in arms about it because, you know, five years of social media is a long time. It is so much information into your lives. So just a proposal for now. I think we should emphasize that, but it's certainly one that is receiving a lot of backlash.

Finally, most grandfathers are content to sit in a rocking chair, but not Philip Rivers, who is on his way to getting rocked in a different way soon. The former NFL quarterback retired five years ago from the most punishing league on earth, and yet thanks to a series of unfortunate injuries to both. the Indianapolis Colts is starting and backup quarterbacks. The team dug his number out of an old playbook and called up the 44-year-old to their practice squad for one last playoff push. Again, Rivers is 44. He has 10 kids and one grandchild and already played 17 years in the league.

And yet the Colts are that desperate. One wrinkle for Rivers to consider since he's been retired for five years, he's now showing up on Hall of Fame ballots. But if he is activated and plays, the Hall of Fame clock resets entire. so he'd have to wait to put on a gold jacket. But I think the most pressing issue is that he's a grandfather playing in the NFL, Neil. Well, he's not the first grandfather to have played in the NFL, actually. Brett Farv in 2010 was also a grandfather when he was still playing. It was so funny at the press conference.

One of the reporters goes, like, Philip Rivers, like, do you know, like, what do you weigh now? I mean, that's something that NFL players generally know to a T. It's very important. And he goes, honestly, I have no clue. And that wasn't like I was running away from linemen and running backs anyway. So that got a huge laugh out of the crowd. He's been coaching his kids football team. And maybe that'll help because he's been running the same offense at his son's football team at a high school in Alabama as the Colts are running.

And he's maintained a connection with the Colts coach who is in fact four years younger than him. So it'll be very interesting. We're all kind of hoping that he plays because it's a hilarious story. but in fact he's not older than Tom Brady was when he played his last games at the Buccaneers. If I am retired for five years and somehow Morning Brew Daily needs to call me out, find someone else or do the podcast with someone else. I'm going to be sitting in the rocking. What if you're running the same playbook that we've ever run on here at your other in retirement?

That's fair. I mean, it's a good playbook that we're running. Okay, that is all the time we have. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Thursday. If you want to get in touch, you can set a note to more. Morning Brew Daily at MorningGrew.com or DM us on Instagram at MB Daily Show. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer.

Raymond Lue is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Yuchinawa Ogu is our technical director. Hair and makeup is doing burpees in Terminal 4. Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.