Wells Fargo Can Grow Again & Google Sounds Alarm on Salesforce Hackers

0:00This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Checking off the boxes on your to-do list is a great feeling. And when it comes to checking off coverage, a State Farm agent can help you choose an option that's right for you. Whether you prefer talking in person, on the phone, or using the award-winning app, it's nice knowing you have help finding coverage that best fits your needs. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

0:28Good morning for Your Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, after seven years of sleeping in the garage, Wells Fargo gets invited back into the house. Then hackers have been using a sophisticated voice phishing operation to steal customer data from retail companies. It's Thursday, June 5th. Let's ride.

0:51Happy Switch to release day. Nintendo's highly anticipated follow-up to its best-selling Switch console hit websites and stores around the world at midnight. And if you do not have one in your hands right now, you might be out of luck. Walmart, GameStop, and BJ's have apparently sold out of their inventory, at least online, but they and Target say they'll have limited stock in physical stores. Over in Japan, the frenzy is even bigger. About 2.2 million people in that country alone entered a lottery system to secure a pre-order, And that was after imposing rules like you needed to log 50 hours of gameplay on the Switch to even participate.

1:30Toby, find someone who looks like you the way Nintendo fans look at the Switch, too. They are coming out in droves for this thing. A Verge writer who lives in a town with a population of just 65 ,000 people documented his experience waiting in line to get his Nintendo Switch. And he said his local Best Buy had a line 400 people deep before the Switch even came out. That is some crazy demand. Nintendo expects to sell 15 million units in one year, but you might want to take the over on that. It's great news for electronics retailers, too, like BJ's, like Walmart, like Best Buy. It's their Super Bowl.

2:05They're having all these people come out in droves if the Super Bowl only happened once every eight years. And now a word from our sponsor, LinkedIn Ads. All right, Neil, quiz time. What's the difference between an ad that gets ignored and one that drives results? Better creative? That's part of it, but the other part is who the audience is. You can have the best creative in the world, but if you're barking up the wrong tree, you're not going to see any conversions. That is where LinkedIn comes in. With 130 million decision makers and 10 million C-level execs, all part of LinkedIn's 1 billion member network, you have a lot of trees to bark up.

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3:13With LinkedIn ads, you can target the right people by industry, job title, and more. Start converting your B2B audience today. Spend$250 on your first campaign and get a free$250 credit for the next one. Get started today at linkedin.com slash campaign. Terms and conditions apply. After more than seven years on the Federal Reserve's naughty list, Wells Fargo is finally free. Starting this week, the Fed lifted its asset restrictions on the bank, ending a rare and long-running penalty that had stunted its ability to expand and cost the bank an estimated$39 billion in profits. This saga dates back to 2015 when Wells Fargo was the bell of the banking world.

3:54Its rise to become the country's most viable bank was fueled by a high-pressure sales culture where compensation was tied to revenue goals. But aggressive sales targets ultimately incentivized employees to open around 3.5 million fake or unauthorized customer accounts from 2009 to 2016. What followed was an unprecedented tidal wave of regulatory crackdowns, the harshest being the Fed imposed asset cap that barred the bank from growing its balance sheet beyond$2 trillion until it was able to clean up its act. It took a while, but Wells Fargo has gotten its act together under a new CEO, Charlie Scharf, earning the Fed's blessing to get back to business as usual.

4:34That means the now fourth largest bank in the country can freely take deposits, make more loans, and look into acquiring companies once more. Neil, this has been a long comeback for Wells Fargo that has involved rebuilding its tarnished reputation and fixing deep-rooted cultural issues at the bank. Now we'll see if it has any gas left in the tank after years of being stuck in neutral because it sure has a lot of ground to make up. I mean, observers say this was the harshest penalty ever doled out on Wall Street, capping your growth. And it really did cap Wells Fargo's growth because over the years when it was under this penalty, Banks grew immensely.

5:10Average annual deposits at U.S. banks grew by more than a third from 2019 through 2024. Meanwhile, Wells's average annual deposits, because it couldn't grow them, were just up 5 percent over that same time frame. Remember, this was when the Fed issued unprecedented amount of stimulus during the COVID-19 pandemic. This was the 2023 regional banking crisis when several smaller midsize banks went under, and J.P. Morgan and the bigger banks were there to swoop in more deposits. Wells Fargo missed out on all of that, and now it is far behind. Its trading revenue investment banking fees last year were about the same as what J.P.

5:49Morgan earned from those same businesses in just the fourth quarter alone. So it's got some catching up to do, but it does seem like in a prime position to be now one of the more profitable banks on Wall Street now that it has its ducks in order. I do just want to go back to when this punishment was handed down. An analyst at Piper Sandler said it was almost like a ghost story you would tell children to scare them, but not something you'd actually see in practice. This asset cap was just a very scary thing. And initially, actually, it was thought to be maybe this quick undertaking where Wells Fargo could get its act back in order relatively quickly.

6:21And actually, after the punishment was handed down, some analysts actually upgraded the stock because they thought it would be done and dusted within the year. It drew on much longer than that. More and more things started coming out about how rotten the Wells Fargo culture was. They got hit with a$1.7 billion fine from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as well for how they were handling mortgage and auto loans. So it was just this whole thing where they needed to switch the culture out, stop incentivizing these employees to fabricate these customer accounts and just get back to becoming a bank that people could trust once more.

7:00And so it's taken seven long years, but they're finally back to the point where they feel like they can reset and start growing their business again. And the prognosis looks pretty good if you listen to Jamie Dimon, who's the JP Morgan CEO. He actually handpicked the Wells Fargo CEO, Charlie Scharf, out of college to be his protege. He worked with Dimon to build what is now the modern JP Morgan, the biggest bank in the world. Charlie Scharf then went to Visa, where he doubled that stock price in four years. Then he went to BNY Mellon, and then he went to Wells Fargo for this cleanup job. So he has been in the background, perhaps, of Wall Street CEOs, just because he's been mopping the floors for seven years.

7:41Now he's ready to hit the stage. He's 60. And Jamie Dimon said, I'm very bullish on Wells Fargo. This is not only good for Wells Fargo, but for the industry overall. But you have to think in the back of his mind, he's saying, well, we have a serious competitor now to deal with. Yeah, I do think that the biggest thing that Wells Fargo can do now to get back on its feet is cut down some costs. The bank had hired 10 ,000 employees across its risk and control groups to try to address some of these regulatory issues. So last year it spent$2.5 billion more on those groups compared to 2018. So they can finally trim that headcount down.

8:17They don't need so many people working on these regulatory issues, and they can actually start making money for the business instead. Moving on, honk if you need rare earth minerals. Global automakers are leaning on their horns to get anyone to pay attention to an impending crisis. They're going to have to pause production at plants in the coming days and weeks because they're running out of the magnets made by rare earth minerals necessary to make cars. This impending manufacturing catastrophe began back in April when China halted exports of rare earth magnets, a key input for literally every piece of advanced electronics in the world, cars, planes, cell phones, robots, data centers, weapons.

8:55If it has a motor, generator, or sensor, it requires a magnet made by rare earth minerals. The problem is that China has a stranglehold on these components controlling more than 90 % of the market, and the Chinese stopped shipping those internationally two months ago, reportedly in retaliation for Trump's tariffs. Now, companies' stockpiles are dwindling, and without new supply, they say they're going to have to shut down factories imminently. The rare earth shortage would be most devastating to the auto sector, the largest buyer of these magnets. Without the magnets, they simply can't make cars and would have to send workers home and turn the lights off.

9:30It's already happening. Last week, Ford temporarily closed its Ford Explorer SUV factory near Chicago due to a lack of magnets. Toby, shades of the 2021 chip shortage here that devastated auto production. Are there any workarounds? Yeah, the workaround here is you need rare earths. China is not sending you them. So what do you do? You go and set up manufacturing for auto parts in China. You start building your engines over in China, which is diametrically opposed to, you know, know, the Trump administration's goal of restoring American manufacturing. But when you have such a critical component of the supply chain being kind of constricted by China, you're going to have to get creative with it.

10:12So one option is you literally just start building engines over there. Another option, which is just a horrible option, is you partially finish an engine, send the whole engine over to China, have just a dime or nickel size rare earth magnet installed, and then send that back to the U.S., which again is not cost effective, not efficient whatsoever. So these workarounds are pretty much working very much against the U.S. administration's goals of trying to bolster auto manufacturing inside our borders. And it's just incredible what these magnets go into. It's literally everything. There are as many as 12 magnets in a single luxury car seat.

10:50They're also in high-end speaker systems. So it's potentially, you know, automakers could just say, okay, well, we can't make souped up cars anymore. You're not getting adjustable seats. You're getting downgraded speakers because we just simply can't make these cars with the necessary requirements because we don't have magnets. So they are pleading. And it's not just the United States automakers. European automakers have also had to idle factories over the past few weeks because China has halted these shipments, not just to the United States, but all around the world. So they are pleading with China to open up these shipments back.

11:23But it just goes to show how incredible a hand China has in this trade war because, I mean, there's nothing more powerful than holding these magnets because they are the entire world's Achilles heel. Without them, you can't make a single piece of advanced electronics. Yeah, and that's maybe what will happen is that you'll start downgrading your electronics. One option is to revert back to older electric vehicle motor technology, which is less efficient and less cost effective, but doesn't rely as much on rare earth magnets. So that's not a great solution. And the other solution is just produce more gas-powered cars, which also necessarily isn't great for companies who have fuel economy standards to try to meet, emission standards to try to meet.

12:03So they are between a rock, a hard place, and a rare earth mineral. And right now, China does hold all the cards. Google's threat intelligence group is sort of like an IT department for the whole internet, and it just issued a warning telling companies to be on the lookout for a sophisticated hack hitting 20 businesses across the US and UK in recent weeks. A hacking group has been impersonating IT personnel in tricking people into revealing login info or installing a copycat malicious version of a Salesforce tool. So far, the network has attacked 20 companies, mostly by calling up employees, pretending to be their friends over at IT support and nicking some sensitive credentials in the process.

12:43Google's report didn't name specific companies, but it follows a rash of reports from Adidas, Victoria's Secret, Cartier, and North Face that they've been facing cyber attacks in recent weeks. Now, if you're a frequent Salesforce tool user, don't be alarmed. The issue isn't tied to any inherent vulnerability in its software. It's more tied to inherent vulnerabilities in humanity's software, as the hackers have relied on voice phishing campaigns and social engineering to gain access to customer info. So Neil, Google has put out the bat signal here to remain vigilant, as these hacks keep coming and they don't stop coming.

13:16I mean, these retailers are taking a massive hit from these hacks. Marks & Spencer, which is a UK retailer, expects to lose$400 million in operating profit because it can't sell anything online. It's been going on for weeks, and it doesn't expect its e-commerce site to get back up until July. So that whole area of its business is just completely offline. Victoria's Secret website had been offline for multiple days. It just got it up recently, but it just lost millions of dollars in sales. Retailers are kind of a sitting duck in the cybersecurity space. They are very ripe for hacking. They're going to target any industry with high transaction volumes, which retailers have.

13:55They have tight margins as well. So they're not going to maybe invest in cybersecurity the way other companies would. And they just have tons of customer information because what do you do every single time you buy something? You type in all of your personal information so they can send it to you and you give them your credit card information. So retailers are just kind of sitting there ripe for hacking and Google's putting out this call saying stay vigilant. The damage is already done. And the issue here too is that it's not easy to get these hackers out of the system once they've gained access through legitimate credentials.

14:28And so you are seeing companies literally turning things off and turning them back on again like Victoria's Secret who had to take their website down because you can't necessarily fix things. You have to stop attackers from getting deeper into your network. So you oftentimes do just shut down and totally delete systems basically to reset and build them back up. So yeah, it is a massive headache because hackers are not easy to get rid of once they've wormed their way into your business. Up next, we got Neal's Numbers. Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from Evglyss.

15:07After an initial dosing phase, about 4 in 10 people taking EBCLIS achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing. EBCLIS, LibriKizumab, LBKZ, a 250 milligram per two milliliter injection, is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema. Also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies.

15:36EPCLIS can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to EPCLIS. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EPCLIS. Before starting EPCLIS, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Searching for real relief? Ask your doctor about EPCLIS and visit ePCLIS.lily.com or call 1-800-LILY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. Tuesday on NBC, Jimmy Fallon and Bozema St. John host the highly anticipated new competition show. I hired 10 creatives from all walks of life.

16:10They will be battling it out to see who can impress the world's biggest brands. This is a huge opportunity. This is the battle for the next big idea. This is not play play. We're spending millions of dollars. I'm so excited to embark on this adventure with all of you. Make the best idea win! On brand with Jimmy Fallon. Series premiere Tuesday on NBC. Welcome to Neal's Numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will have you going, well, actually, to your friends all weekend. My first number is the fastest growing millionaire hub in the country. Think you know what city it is?

16:44Scottsdale, Arizona. According to a new report by Henley & Partners, the bachelor party capital of the United States is also home to the fastest growing millionaire population of any American city, with its population of high net worth individuals growing by 125 % between 2014 and 2024. The desert city near Phoenix has gained thousands of new millionaires thanks in part to the growth of the tech industry in the region. GoDaddy and Carvana are headquartered in the area and Intel and TSMC have growing presences. Scottsdale also has leisure amenities loved by wealthy retirees like sunny weather, an infinite number of places to get plastered, resorts, and elite golf courses.

17:25But perhaps just as interesting as Scottsdale topping the list is noting which city was replaced, Austin, Texas. Last year, Austin was named the fastest growing millionaire hub in the country. However, it's not even in the top five this year. Texas's capital boomed during the pandemic as a number of tech companies opened up offices there, but it's lost some of its luster due to the tech slowdown and more competition from places like Scottsdale and Tampa. You can see this playing out in the luxury home market during the time period studied in the report about one in four homes in Austin was listed for$1 million or more compared to the more than 50 % of properties listed for$1 million or more in Scottsdale.

18:04Toby, a Phoenix suburb is rising. It is rising right now and it does have a lot of millionaire residents, 14 ,800 by Henley and Partners estimation, which is solid. That's more than West Palm Beach, which was second place over the last decade with 112 % growth in high net worth individuals. But then if you just zoom out and you look at like the true concentrations of where millionaires actually live, you look at the Bay Area, which came in at number three on the list, which is so impressive because the Bay Area has 342 ,000 millionaires who live there, 82 billionaires, 756 centi millionaires as well.

18:43So just in terms of the scale, that's a lot of Scottsdale's worth of millionaires that are living in the Bay Area. It is. This report measured the fastest growing ones in Scottsdale is truly rising. What is not rising besides Austin, Texas, is Connecticut. Poor Connecticut, Greenwich and Darien. They were on these lists for many, many years, but they've been they've completely dropped off the list entirely. And that's because people are just going to Florida. West Palm Beach was the second fastest growing one. Miami was number four. So you're seeing this exodus of richer people from Greenwich and Darien down to the east coast of Florida and the desert of Arizona.

19:21My next number may explain why visits to your Nana increasingly include ripping a bong. U.S. marijuana use among people age 65 or older surged nearly 46 percent from 2021 to 2023, according to a new study in JAMA Internal Medicine. 7 % of older Americans say they used cannabis in the past month, compared to 5.2 % in 2022, 4.8 % in 2021, and less than 1 % in the mid-2000s. The upswing can probably be explained by cannabis being legalized in more states, as well as the social stigma wearing off for taking cannabis to deal with chronic pain, stress, or other conditions afflicting America's seniors.

19:59Health experts are warning this increased use comes with risk. After all, there's a lot more THC in cannabis nowadays than when boomers were toking up at Woodstock as teenagers decades ago. And in an editor's note accompanying the study, three geriatricians wrote that cannabis can complicate the management of chronic diseases, interfere with other drugs people are taking, and impair the senses and cause accidents. So more research into the benefits and risks are needed. But one thing's clear, Toby, pot is just not for the youth anymore. It's not just for the youth. It's increasingly for older, richer women specifically, too, because the increase was more pronounced among women than men and was also more pronounced among adults with annual incomes over$75 ,000.

20:42So it does really look like that stigma factor has totally changed. And now, you know, these older women are just kind of sitting on their porch and smoking some weed, whether medicinally or recreationally. It is not just for the youth as well, because there was this other survey that found that cannabis use in the U.S. has been increasing, but not actually amongst teenagers. This research looked at data on more than 500 ,000 people's cannabis habits during different time periods from 2013 to 2022. And teenagers was flat while everybody else's cannabis use was growing as well. So it is this fascinating thing where it is making its way upwards in the age ranks and staying the same or even dwindling amongst the youths.

21:22My final number is a listener submission from Valeria. So you have her to thank for this one. And she alerted us to the fact that Sherwin-Williams, the paint company, has begun to spotlight its loneliest hue of the year, meaning the hues that were the least popular among customers. For 2025, that hue was Radiant Lilac SW0074. Despite being a rich, inviting purple, Radiant Lilac had the fewest gallons sold of any hue in the Sherwin-Williams portfolio last year Out of the millions of paint gallons the company tints per year, there were less than 1 ,000 gallons of radiant lilac made. Design experts say it's probably because homeowners are a cautious bunch and purple is a bold choice that's hard to pull off.

22:04Like, if you do purple wrong, people may never come over your house again. Still, the folks at Sherwin-Williams think radiant lilac shouldn't scare you off if you are thoughtful about it. This hue works really well if you're going for a 70s retro vibe paired with olive and mustard yellows and walnut wood tones. Radiant Lilac would also shine in design styles ranging from Art Deco, Mid-Century Modern, Scandinavian, and Bold Minimalism. Toby, I really like this marketing initiative. It's smart to highlight the ugly duckling, but explain why it's been overlooked. Yeah, I don't like this code at all.

22:36I love it. A lot of designers kind of, once this press release came out, started saying how they would use it, and some of them said Radiant Lilac is terminally outdated. Obviously, it's very intimidating, too, to try to put this outdated color in multiple places. Also, it's just not trendy at all right now. These kind of pastel shades are very much out. There's very much more of a focus on these natural organic tones, deeper greens, deeper browns, et cetera. And Radiant Lilac just doesn't fit at all with that. The other color story that we've talked about on the show before, though, is Pantone names a color of the year each year.

23:12And this year, it's Peach Fuzz. And so I started looking at color theory. And peach fuzz and radiant lilac actually pair quite well together. They're both sort of muted. Their low saturation levels help them blend without clashing. Also, it's a nice warm and cool balance. So you can take the most popular color of the year and the least popular color of the year and actually make some magic out of that. And I kind of like that that is the case here. I'd probably need to call up a professional because those two together, oh, my God, it would be a disaster. OK, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines.

23:42the hits keep coming to President Trump's big, beautiful bill. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office calculated that the massive tax cuts and spending package would add$2.4 trillion to U.S. debt by 2034, giving more ammo to critics like Elon Musk, who say the bill would bankrupt the country for future generations. Specifically, the bean counters at the CBO found that the bill would cut spending by$1.3 trillion in the coming decade, but reduce tax revenues far more than that, 3.75 trillion. It would also cause the number of people without health insurance to rise by 10.9 million from cuts to Medicaid.