Winners and Losers of Shutdown Ending & Last-Ever Penny Minted

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0:31Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Toby Howell. And I'm Anne Barry. Today, the government shutdown is over, but the economic effects are lingering like a bad hangover. And fraudulent texts, how Google is taking on the bad guys. It's Thursday, November 13th. Let's ride.

0:52Good morning and happy Thursday, everyone. Well, I encourage everybody to go get a neck massage this morning because I foresee some upward gazing in your future. That's because we're in the middle of a crazy northern lights display. Aurora Borealis has been spotted in a huge swathe of states recently, including as far south as Florida and Alabama. Now, this particular storm comes as a result of a phenomenon called a coronal mass ejection, where the sun blasts charged particles at Earth, leading to this crazy light show. Well, this particular show has reached G4 levels, Toby, the second highest on the NOAA's five-step scale.

1:27Now, the storm likely peaked the past evening, but some lights will still be on display tonight. So, Toby, if I lived in one of these states that rarely gets a chance to see something like the Northern Lights, how do I go about capturing that moment? As far south as Florida, my own home state. I'm so glad you asked, Sam. Three things you need. You need darkness, exposure, and your iPhone. Get away from all the light pollution near civilization if possible. You're not going to see them in Times Square. And then change your iPhone settings to use a longer exposure time so the sensor lets in more light than usual.

1:59Keep a steady hand here because I've done this. It comes out really blurry if you're moving around all the time. So if you want a crisp and cool picture, have a steady hand. But you'd be shocked at what a smartphone can pick up these days. I pointed it at what I thought was a pretty normal night sky one night and let that puppy keep its shutter open for 10 seconds. And bam, Northern Lights just appeared. So it's cool. It's fun. If you are in a state as far south as, you know, my home state of Florida, it's a pretty rare occurrence. So try to get out there and see them. Now a word from our sponsor, U.S.

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3:07So whether you're splurging on theater tickets or covering an unexpected bill, You can pay later on every purchase with the U.S. Bank Split Card. Learn more at usbank.com slash split card. That's usbank.com slash split card. After 44 long days, the government shutdown is officially over. The House passed a bill last night to fund the government through January 30th, and President Trump signed it, reopening the federal government, which had been hanging a closed sign on its doors since October 1st. The deal came to fruition after eight Democratic senators and six Democratic House reps broke ranks to pass the funding bill without extending the enhanced health care subsidies they were originally fighting for.

3:47The package also includes a reinstatement of federal workers who were laid off during the shutdown. Now that the deal has been reached, some things will quickly resume with the government back up and running. About 800 ,000 federal employees who have been furloughed or working without pay will start to receive their paycheck again, including back pay. and SNAP benefits will also be restored, likely within 24 hours in most states, with funding secured through next September. But it could be a minute until everything is back to normal. For instance, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association president, Nick Daniels, said earlier this week that it took over two months for staffing levels to rebound after the last shutdown ended in 2019.

4:27As for the official government data that makes our jobs as podcasters easier, there will be delays, and the White House said that inflation in jobs data from October may never be released. And the sheer length of this thing caused all sorts of economic fallout. Who's emerging from this as a winner and who's emerging as a loser? Well, I'm really struggling to think, Toby, of someone who is a winner coming out of all this, to be perfectly honest. But definitely in terms of the losers, let's take a look at some of the numbers. You know, every week that went by with the shutdown, the economy probably suffered between 10 to 50 to 30 billion dollars in terms of lost productivity or lost GDP.

5:05If you take a look at sort of specific sectors, to your point, you just talked about air traffic control. By the way, I traveled through this shutdown and I got every delay you can imagine, but I got to hand it to the air traffic controllers who kept working through this. It's stressful at the best of times and they were sort of amazing. But look, the airlines obviously lost a bunch of flights. We saw 2 ,000 scrapped on Monday. We saw 900 scrapped even yesterday. It looked like this was going to get better. Small businesses, how many times have you and I talked about sweet greens in the carvers of the world?

5:34All of those locations near federal offices certainly saw traffic jive up. So I think lots of people were struggling. I think there's a lot of happiness that it's over. I'll find some winners. I always look on the bright side. And the winners were actually probably Wall Street and investors throughout this because the market has performed pretty well throughout the entire shutdown. Overall, if you look at the past 13 shutdowns, the S &P 500 was flat or positive in 10 of them. So really, the market tends to shrug off these things for the most part. And I do think that if you look over the past September and October, it wasn't the strongest that we've ever seen, but also it wasn't the weakest.

6:12We saw about a 2 % gain during the shutdown from October 1st to now. So the market did perform a little bit better than maybe you would expect considering all the economic turmoil that was happening under the service. Another sector of the economy that probably did pretty well during the shutdown was private credit and gig platforms. Because when you are going without paychecks for a while, like a lot of government workers have, these buy now, pay later plans, these paycheck advance apps, they step in and bridge the gap for these missed paychecks. This happened during the pandemic era as well, where cash app and then things like DoorDash also started to become more ubiquitous.

6:49So a short term boost for sure. I don't know if it's going to be a long term boost, but these sort of bridge the gap moments are big for companies like that as well. Well, I think everyone's super, super excited to be getting back to work. Also, just one thing that's sort of interesting here, Toby, it's looking ahead now, we're getting into that sort of holiday season when consumers are thinking about what their holiday spend is going to look like. So folks thinking about, you know, what does it mean for the retail sector? Again, some of this back pay, folks will get paid, there may be some catch up spending, but some of it may be lost in the meantime.

7:21Yeah. And the housing market as well definitely slowed down during this because mortgage applications were delayed or slowed down by a lot of missing income verification. You can't go get a house if you don't have any income to pledge. So the housing market is probably going to slowly emerge from this, especially in areas around D.C. as well. But you're right. The loss of the overall economy, this is lost productivity that you can't easily recapture or regain after it happens. And so there's going to be some lingering, you know, productivity loss. There's going to be some lingering effects on hiring all the way up to 2026.

7:53So the overall impact, you know, that$14 billion a week number that you mentioned, I think that is potentially just scratching the surface on how long this thing. I called it a hangover at the beginning of the show because it's going to, there's going to be an economic hangover, even though the, you know, the close sign has turned to open on the government. The good news, though, does mean that everyone who is worried about their Thanksgiving travel, I don't know if you, Toby, were worried about getting on a plane a couple of weeks from now, at least there is this sort of end in sight and folks are actually getting a little bit more confident about being able to see friends and loved ones over that Thanksgiving period.

8:24Let's move on, Toby, and talk about something that I'm very curious as to whether you've experienced this. Have you ever received a text message saying you're overdue on a toll payment or that you need to authorize a delivery of something you frankly didn't know you'd ordered? Yes, all the time. All the time. Okay, well, that means that like you, and I've had this too, you've been experiencing together with victims from all over the world. You've been plagued with millions of scam text messages. And these have allegedly made over a billion dollars for the instigators of these schemes. But now someone is finally standing up to these scammers and it's someone who might actually have the might to do it.

9:05So the unexpected Batman in this, the defender of those text recipients, is Google suing the cyber criminal group behind these text phishing scams, claiming 25 unnamed individuals are part of an operation known as, quote, lighthouse. Now, in the lawsuit, they're saying the public was preyed upon by using Google's logos and trademarks on fraudulent websites to dupe unsuspecting victims, stealing their personal information, such as credit card numbers and bank accounts, millions of dollars as a result being swindled from people. Now, Google cited research by the CSIS Security Group in its legal filings, claiming that somewhere between just under$30 million to$115 million, this is a big range, U.S.

9:48credit or banking card details have been stolen. Now, Google believes that these individuals are in China, which means they're outside the reach of U.S. courts. But they're spending a lot of time and resources on this, hoping that this suit acts as a deterrent. So, Toby, phishing has been growing in scale and sophistication. Does Google have an actual shot at putting all of this to an end. I mean, I certainly hope so because I think every single person listening has gone through that moment where they get a new text, you look at it and you're like, why do I have an unpaid toll in Florida? You see some sketchy looking URL and I think a lot of people have been trained at this point to just ignore it.

10:25But still, this is a massive global scam operation. So Lighthouse is phishing as a service. You know, there's software as a service. Lighthouse is this thing that you can sell to criminals that has subscriptions and weekly, monthly, annual payment tiers. It's just like any other software plan. But what it does is it gives you ready-made phishing templates. It allows you to set up fake websites. It has backend dashboards for the stolen data. So it really is this sophisticated operation. So Google is saying like, hey, this is not just a couple of people, you know, firing these out themselves. This is a legitimate company that is, you know, making money and it's selling subscriptions to these things.

11:05and it's preying off people using USPS, using EasyPass, these institutions that people are familiar with. And trust. Yeah, they're playing off the trust that is associated with those names and they're going after unsuspecting people. So I was just shocked to see the sophistication of this lighthouse enterprise. I'm gonna be really curious to see how this legal case actually unfolds and whether it's even possible to get a result here. So think about this, Google is filing suit, but it doesn't actually know the real identities of the scammers. The scammers are listed as anonymous. So they've got handles on Telegram, for example.

11:40So I guess the question is, if this is supposed to be preventative, right, if this is supposed to be Google saying anyone who's thinking about going there don't because you're going to have the full might and power of one of the biggest companies on planet Earth coming after you. It sounds scary, but is anyone going to be intimidated by it? It's going to be tough because they are outside of U.S. borders. So the legal basis here is, you know, a little tougher to find. But we have seen that, you know, injunctions can be shown to hosting providers or other tech firms that are based within the United States that could act as a deterrent as you will.

12:16So you have to kind of go through these legal pathways in order to say, like, hey, you are hosting this software in the U.S. we can go after you, even though we can't necessarily get to these 25 unnamed defendants as easily. So yeah, I think that there is some illegal leverage here that you get by, you know, pursuing this lawsuit, even though it's going to be tough to actually track down the individuals responsible for it. I do also wonder how much they're depending on getting some collaboration with Chinese authorities if this is where this business is based to try and ultimately get this shut down.

12:45Just as a side note, you know, here it is, Google is the one filing suit, but it would be tough for us to ignore the fact that Google faces intense legal scrutiny itself right now. It does have recent antitrust rulings over its search and advertising dominance. So, Toby, I'm curious, how much of this is an attempt to try and reclaim some reputational high ground again, if you're Google? Yeah, it's trying to be the white knight here, the Batman, as you said. So, because you are right, everyone has experienced these. And so they say, all right, Google, thanks for having our back here. Again, who knows how effective they're going to be because this is such a sophisticated and widespread operation.

13:22But I do think you're right. There probably is a little bit of goodwill that they're trying to garner here as well. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with a celebrity Neal's numbers segment right after this. The crypto landscape changes daily. Keep up with some of the best launches and new tech all in one place on your commute. Join Ripple for a series of crypto and blockchain conversations with some of the best in the business. Learn how traditional banking benefits from the blockchain. Or how your digital assets can be kept safe and secure thanks to their all-in-one custody platform.

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15:05That's woo.com slash go custom. Welcome to Neil's Numbers, the segment where I do my best celebrity Neil impression and bring you three stats from the week's news that will help you dominate Thanksgiving small talk. And my first number is 60, which is the percent of grades handed out at Harvard last year that were A's. That's according to an internal report from the school where by its own admission, it concluded that it's failing to perform the key functions of grading properly. Sending out report cards that would make it onto every fridge back home is a recent phenomenon. back in the 2005 school year, only 25 % of grades were A's, a number that has been steadily rising since.

15:46Along the way, the median GPA has risen to 3.83 from 3.29 back in 1985. Well, you say maybe kids are just smarter these days. Potentially, but time spent studying has hardly changed in the past two decades, hovering around six hours a week. So workload hasn't actually grown, just the grades. Part of the gradeflation trend comes from professors who fear tougher grading will drive students away from their courses. Too much stress, they argue, is actually bad for academic rigor. But 60 % A's, I couldn't even muster that in first grade, Anne. I was a star pupil. Of course you were a star pupil and star athlete and all these kinds of things.

16:26Well, is that because you were at a school where basically your teachers were being intellectually honest and they weren't inflating your grades at that time? That's the big question here because a lot of people feel like, well, students are actually kind of mad about this. the report coming out because they're like, you're moving the goalposts here. You admitted us because we were straight A students. Now we're getting A's at school and you're saying, ah, there's way too much grade inflation going on there. They are basically saying like, Hey, we're pretty dang smart here. But then you have some other students that say, the problem is the fact that you can get A's in courses that you don't do work on.

16:57If you do the work and get an A, that's fine. But a lot of these courses are easier and just handing out A's like candy, which devalues, you know, the A's that people are working harder from. So I can see both sides of this argument here for sure. Particularly if these are students who are an A's, they're competitive actually. They want to see some differentiation in performance. And what happened too is that this has not been a battle that is too modern times. Back in 2004, Princeton also tried capping its A's a little bit, but they dropped that actually because they found it was causing more stress in their student body and also made their students look worse next to peers from other schools.

17:33Because if you're coming out with Princeton and you have a 3.2 GPA and you're trying to get into law school against someone from Harvard who's got a 3.8 GPA, that is not going to, you know, you can't square the circle there. So there's a long history of schools trying to crack down on A's. One solution that Harvard actually put forth is bringing back the A plus as like a carrot on the top. So it's not just straight A's anymore. Now, if you bring back, you know, that highest upper echelon of grading, maybe it will cause people to like work harder there. So lots of different angles to this, but it is fascinating that, you know, the A's are just so plentiful at Harvard these days that everyone is getting them, they're handing them out like candy.

18:12I'm so skeptical. That just means you get great inflation to more A pluses, right? Over time. You know, one of the things here, Toby, that struck me when I was reading about this, there's a lot of conversation around how the students are pushing back. They're saying they already face extreme workloads and stress. What about the professors, right? If you take a look at this from their perspective, one of the reasons this has happened is because professors have been stressed that if they don't have a course as perceived as being at least accessible for getting grades that are within reach, then they might see enrollment fall.

18:40And there's this kind of race to the bottom in some sense in terms of it being a popularity contest. Yeah, that is a great point. Because yeah, if you read like, oh, easy A or hard A, you're probably gonna maybe opt for that. Well, I don't know how, I don't wanna put words in the mouth of Harvard students, but you're absolutely right that professors are facing this as well. My next number has to do with how people use chat GPT. The Washington Post analyzed 47 ,000 publicly shared conversations and found that 1 in 10 users mainly use the tool for social interaction, not work or productivity. That supports what OpenAI's internal data drop from September shows, too.

19:14Most queries are for personal use, not professional. Within that personal use subset, the Post found that despite OpenAI largely promoting ChatGPT as a productivity tool, about 10 % of users were engaging in abstract discussions with the chatbot, ranging from obscure medical treatment explorations to musing on the nature of reality. So a lot of people are treating the chatbot less as a grammar checker or email writer and more as an all-knowing oracle they can use to probe the depths of themselves and existence. One thing that also stands out about this particular data set is how users never thought their chats would see the light of day.

19:50OpenAI removed discoverability of chats via Google in July after realizing users were unintentionally sharing private info. But the post was able to scrape 93 ,000 shared chats preserved by the Internet Archive to build their own analysis. And a big takeaway here is that ChatGPT is used frequently as a companion and a confidant in addition to practical use cases like writing, researching, or explaining things. Let's repeat a sentence you literally just said, Tippi. You literally just said that ChatGPT is used by people to probe the depths of themselves and their existence. That was poetic in terms of your voice over there.

20:23So I'm writing that down. You know, one of the things too that was interesting here is there is this risk of something called AI sycophancy, which is where you type something into ChatGPT and it has a tendency to agree with you more than to actually push back, which just shows the importance of the prompts that you use if you really want something objective coming back. And the data supports that. So the post found that ChatGPT begins responses with variants of yes or correct 17 ,500 times. that's nearly 10 times more often than no or wrong. So you're absolutely right. This has been the number one complaint people have had about especially recent AI models is that they just agree with you.

20:59They say, yes, you're the smartest person in the world or yes, that idea is great rather than pushing back. And many people have tried to manually say, no, I want you to disagree with me more. So the language patterns, the yes effect are absolutely there in this data set as well. You know, it's a little bit like improvisation training. It's always yes and every sentence you have. The other thing that was interesting here is just thinking about where these chatbot conversations end up. So one place that folks have been posting their chatbot conversations is on Reddit. And here's why this caught my eye, Toby.

21:31People like Reddit and other forums are literally selling this data to, guess who, OpenAI to try to train these models. So now we're getting AI-generated conversations potentially training AI models. It's AI all the way to the bottom. It's a circular AI thing. It's a totally different format. Exactly. My final number shows just how much a beef can cost you. As Disney's fight with YouTube TV over a new content distribution contract drags on, the blackout is turning into a financial nightmare. According to estimates, the feud is costing Disney an estimated$4.3 million per day in lost revenue. That figure comes by way of a Morgan Stanley analyst who project a$60 million total hit to Disney's upcoming quarter if the blackout lasts 14 days.

22:18Of course, the impact on viewers might be even more intense. YouTube TV's 10 million plus subscribers have now missed two Monday night football games, including the Eagles versus the Packers on November 10th, which if we're being honest, you didn't miss much, as well as two full Saturdays of college football due to the ESPN blackout. Leaving millions of NFL and college football fans in the dark, the single most valuable audience Disney holds is a code red for the company. But there's two sides to this money losing coin. Disney is losing$30 million a week, but YouTube TV risks subscriber churn.

22:50According to a recent survey, 24 % of YouTube TV subscribers say they've already canceled or planned to because of the blackout. Those stats sent YouTube parent Google into damage control. It offered users a one-time$20 account credit to discourage cancellations. And there's no winners here. Maybe the financial toll will determine who blinks first, though. This is like the government shutdown. Of the media world, right? That's what we're in. And just to put into context, Toby, some of those numbers that you laid out, that$30 million per week that Disney's losing in revenue, that was the Morgan Stanley analyst you referenced.