Who Will Replace Jerome Powell? Tesla Hit with Securities Fraud Suit & AMD’s Q2 Earnings

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2:21Welcome to Prof G Markets. I'm Ed Elson. It is August 6th. Let's check in on yesterday's market vitals. The major indices declined after weaker than expected data showed growth in the services sector flatlined in July. The data stoked stagflation concerns and further complicates the Federal Reserve's path forward. Oil also fell as Russia weighed an air truce with Ukraine. And finally, Snap shares tanked 15 % in post-market trading after reporting earnings that missed expectations, particularly on the global average revenue per user metric. Okay, what else is happening? Who will be the next Fed chair?

3:01That is the question that Wall Street is asking this week as Trump continues to complain about Jerome Powell and the Fed's decision to hold rates steady. With Powell's term ending next May, Trump is expected to select the next chair, quote, soon. There's been much speculation over the potential candidates for the job, many from within the current Trump administration. However, in a CNBC interview yesterday, Trump confirmed that there is a list of four candidates for the job, and Scott Besant is not one of them. Trump explicitly mentioned, quote, both Kevins, referring to Kevin Hassett and Kevin Walsh, but he left out the names of the two others on the list.

3:41It has been widely rumored that Christopher Waller, a current Fed governor, is one of the other candidates running. So, who are any of these people, and why should we care now? Well, apparently Trump is weighing whether to install his pick to replace Powell in a soon-to-be vacant Fed governor seat. That move would effectively create a shadow chair, someone auditioning for the top job, turning up the pressure on Powell to cut rates and giving Trump a preview of his next Fed chair without the hassle of a full confirmation just yet. So let's go through these candidates. And let's start with Kevin Hassett.

4:21So Kevin Hassett's history with the Fed dates back to 1992, when he first started as an economist in the Research and Statistics Department. From there, he also served as a consultant to the Treasury Department under Clinton and Bush. Around this time, in 1999, Hassett co-authored a book called Dow 36 ,000, The New Strategy for Profiting from the Coming Rise in the Stock Market. The book argued that equities were significantly undervalued and predicted that the Dow would more than 3x by 2004. Ironically, this came out right before the dot-com implosion. We, of course, did not see a 3x in the Dow.

5:01Instead, it cratered about 25%. And the book was ultimately described by Fortune as the, quote, most spectacularly wrong investing book ever. So not a great start. I'm sorry to lead with that. But that is what happened. And it was a really bad book. He basically claimed that stocks were way undervalued at a time when they were basically the most overvalued they had ever been in the history of the stock market. So he got that one very wrong. Anyway, what else did he get up to? Well, he was later nominated by Trump to lead the Council of Economic Advisors. one of his highlights in that role was a challenge he made to a bls report has it claimed that wage growth under trump was actually higher than had been reported and now is starting to get a sense of why trump likes this person a year later he stepped down from this position he laid low for a while and then covet hits and has it is tapped again by trump this time to deal with the pandemic His job specifically was to help figure out how many people are going to die from COVID.

6:10Did he have any experience with infectious diseases? No. Did he know anything about pandemics? Probably not. But anyway, that was his job. So he does his research, he builds his model, and he ultimately concludes that COVID deaths will peak in April and then zero out by May of 2020. obviously turned out to be completely incorrect. And then when this model was released to the public, he again became embroiled in controversy for being so wrong. So anyway, after that, Trump reappoints him to lead the National Economic Council again, this time as director. And now he is one of the frontrunners to be the next chair of the Federal Reserve.

6:54So that is Kevin Hassett, the author of Dow 36 ,000, and the creator of the model that said that COVID would basically end by May of 2020. Next up, we have the other Kevin, Kevin Walsh, who is also no stranger to the Fed. He served as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors from 2006 to 2011 after being nominated during the Bush administration. Before that, Walsh worked at Morgan Stanley in the M &A division for seven years. He is most known for the role he played in response to the financial crisis. In 2008, when the markets crashed, he was known as the liaison to Wall Street. He was essentially the guy who communicated between the Federal Reserve and the big banks.

7:41He's also been described as the bridge between Ben Bernanke, who was the former Fed chair, and Wall Street. And according to most reports, he did that job pretty well. His big mistake, though, was his prediction on inflation. Throughout 2008, he kept predicting that inflation was going to explode, and instead, the opposite happened. We had deflation, and a lot of economists have argued that it was partly our failure to recognize that that contributed to the crisis. Anyway, he finishes up his Fed career. He goes to the Hoover Institution to be a lecturer. He joins the board of UPS, and he also joins a business forum to advise the Trump administration on economic policy.

8:24Fast forward to 2025, he's now on the Fed share shortlist, and he definitely knows it. He's been very quick to criticize Jerome Powell, to criticize the Fed. Here is what he said on CNBC just a couple of months ago. If I were the president, what I'd be worried about is a central bank that is stuck with models from 1978, governance from a prior period, and don't recognize we could be at the front end of a productivity boom. And if I were the president, I'd be worried that they might not see it. And they might think economic growth is somehow going to be inflationary. I think we were probably in the early innings of a structural decline in prices.

9:05Ken sees it on the front lines of real businesses. And I think if you look over the period of the next year or two, it's a pretty special moment. So that's Kevin Walsh, definitely more qualified than the other Kevin, but definitely a bit of a panderer too. I mean, that is exactly what Trump wants to hear right now, especially on TV. And I'm sure Kevin Walsh knows it. Final detail, he's also married to Jane Lauder, who is the heiress of the S.A. Lauder fortune. I don't have much to say about that, but do with that what you will. Okay, final candidate, Christopher Waller, who currently sits on the Fed's board of governors, not officially confirmed by Trump, but he is widely regarded as a top contender.

9:48So why does Trump like Waller for this job? Well, this should give you an idea. What does it mean to wait six weeks? Is it that critical? And the answer is probably not. It could be, but it's also the reverse. Why wait till September if it's just six weeks? Right now, the data the last few months has been showing that trend inflation is looking pretty good, even on a 12-month basis. So I've labeled these good news rate cuts when if inflation comes down to target, we can actually bring rates down. I've been saying this since about November of 23. So I think we're in that position that we could do this as early as July.

10:28I've always said if you worry about long and variable lags, which everybody always talks about, The whole point of that is to get ahead of it, not wait for it to happen. And then take a policy action that takes quarters or months down the road to actually have any impact. So there you have it. Christopher Waller, he's basically been going on Bloomberg and CNBC and taking pretty much any TV hit, saying that we should lower rates for months now. He was also one of the two governors that dissented on the Fed's decision to hold rates last week. And so this, of course, will very much put him in the running in Trump's book.

11:02As for his resume, before joining the Fed, he was a research director at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. And before that, he was a professor. He taught at Notre Dame, the University of Bonn, Wash U St. Louis, and Indiana University. So, those are your candidates. Kevin, Kevin, Christopher, and someone else. We don't know who. The two Kevins are the frontrunners. Christopher is just a rumor right now. Our pick would probably be Kevin Walsh right now. the second Kevin, he's probably the most qualified. Yes, he is a sycophant, but, you know, they're all sycophants. That's sort of the job here.

11:41If you want to get the job, you don't really have much of a choice. But we'd also like to hear what you think. Who do you think the next Fed chair should be? Let us know in the comments.

11:56Tesla just got sued for securities fraud. The claim, led by shareholders, is that Elon Musk and Tesla knowingly overstated its robotaxis' abilities and concealed major safety risks, all to prop up the stock price. They say Tesla sold the idea that its robotaxi service was fully autonomous and ready to scale. In reality, the vehicle still required a safety driver and the public launch was filled with failures. And according to the complaint, when those failures were exposed, Tesla's stock dropped more than 6%. So another shareholder lawsuit filed against Tesla. This is becoming something of a theme for the company.

12:35Tesla's been involved in roughly 2 ,000 lawsuits all around the world now. Here we have another, once again being filed by a shareholder. This time it's not about Elon's compensation. This time it's about the robotaxi or perhaps the lack thereof. As I said, the claim is that Elon and Tesla misled investors. They're saying that Elon overstated the capabilities, understated the safety risk. They said it was fully autonomous when it wasn't, et cetera, et cetera. And as a result, shareholders got burned. Those are the allegations, at least. The question, however, the question we would like to answer is whether or not those allegations are valid, whether or not they will actually hold up in a court of law.

13:21So to help us answer that, our producer Claire spoke with Professor John C. Coffey Jr. at Columbia Law School. They're suing for an immense amount of money, multiple, multiple billions of dollars. There are many obstacles to a successful suit. First of all, we should recognize this case has been brought in the Western District of Texas as part of the Fifth Circuit. And the Fifth Circuit is a little bit notorious for being the most hostile circuit in the country to securities fraud litigation. They very much are skeptical of securities plaintiffs, and they dismiss a significant percentage of those cases at the outset.

14:01To get further, it's not hard here to say that these facts might be material. But that's not enough. You have to show to succeed not only that material misinformation was misstated or omitted, but you also have to show that it was done with an intent to defraud. And that requirement of showing an intent to defraud, or see enter in lawyer's language, is very difficult and is usually the primary obstacle. What shows that they just weren't careless? You have to show more than that. You have to show that they had clear evidence of an intent to cause damage and injury to the plaintiff's class. That's usually the death knell for those suits that are dismissed.

14:46I'm not saying they can't succeed, but that's their principal challenge. They also have another problem. The stock price after this demonstration was given in Austin only fell about 6%. Let's assume that the stock, the demonstration, was something of a disaster. But the stock only fell 6 % in many stocks, rise or fall 6 % in a single day or two. So there is not clear that that decline was caused by the Austin demonstration or that the demonstration really shows that the market was totally displeased and totally giving up on the company. It may be that a variety of factors, economic conditions and other factors who enter Tesla, could cause that relatively modest 6 % decline.

15:35So if you had to put money on it, I think you'd probably bet that this lawsuit isn't really going anywhere. Yes, Elon hyped it up. Yes, he probably overpromised. But to Professor Coffey's point, there is a line between overpromising and defrauding. And in the eyes of the law, it really all comes down to intent and also the plaintiff's ability to prove that intent. So can they prove that Elon was actively lying about the RoboTaxi's capabilities to defraud the Tesla investor base? Probably not. This was another case of Elon making vague promises about what is probably possible or potentially achievable.

16:22It's the same language he's used throughout the years about many of his other projects. It's a vision about what might happen, but it's also, you know, hard to say with any real certainty. That's always how he's pitched his ideas. And that's how he's pitched this one too. Now, having said that, the lawsuit does draw attention to a larger point that investors should probably think about, and that is, so far, this robotaxi has been really underwhelming. I mean, to the plaintiff's credit, there is no question. This was one of the most hyped vehicle events of the year. And yet, as of today, as of August 6th, we're six weeks into the robotaxi launch in Austin, we've still got fewer than 20 vehicles on the ground.

17:08They're still only available to a very select group of fans and influencers. And most importantly, they're still being supervised by safety operators that sit in the front seat of the car. So put another way, they're not actually autonomous. They still require a human. And we know that because we can just look at the vehicles in Austin, but we can also look at Tesla's own user-submitted data, which tells us that the Tesla system still requires human intervention at least every 340 miles. So sure, no one is sitting behind the wheel, but someone is sitting in the front seat. And the same can't be said for Waymo.

17:50And why are they sitting in the front seat? Well, because someone needs to be there when things go wrong, which, by the way, they have. You know, we haven't seen any real crashes yet, at least not in Austin. We haven't seen anyone get hurt. But we have seen these issues that were stated in the lawsuit. Speeding, driving over curbs, stopping in the middle of an intersection, breaking foreshadows, etc., etc. All of those complaints are real. Now, the Tesla bull might say, oh, you're nitpicking, you're arguing over nothing. And, you know, maybe that's true. But I would also argue that when you're at 20 vehicles and your competitor's at 1 ,500 vehicles, or when you're in one city and your competitor is in five, when you're doing a few hundred rides a week and your competitor's doing a quarter of a million rides a week, I would argue that under those circumstances, yeah, it's okay to nitpick.

18:47It's okay to look at what's happening and say, you know, this isn't that impressive. What is the plan here? What is the path forward? So look, this lawsuit probably won't go anywhere. It's probably just a money grab, to be honest. But it does raise a valid point about Tesla, which is that the robotaxi simply has not lived up to the hype. And that isn't a value judgment. All you have to do is look at the numbers, or look at the videos or just look at the safety operators in the front seat. And it will be very clear to you that that is simply the truth. After the break, a look at AMD's second quarter earnings.

19:30Stay with us.

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22:00We're back with Prof.G. Markets. Chipmaker AMD delivered mixed results in its second quarter earnings report. The company narrowly missed on EPS. However, revenue was a beat, up 32 % year-over-year, with data center sales up 14 % to$3.2 billion. That is solid growth. They're also modest when you compare it to NVIDIA's$80 billion in data center revenue last quarter, up 73 % year-over-year. U.S. restrictions on advanced chip exports to China also impacted gross margins, leading to$800 million in inventory-related charges. As we previously discussed, those restrictions have been lifted, but AMD's application to resume selling into China is still under review.

22:46Looking ahead, AMD offered a strong forecast, guiding revenue nearly 5 % above estimates, and that's excluding any sales of advanced chips to China. However, it warned that its access to the Chinese market remains uncertain. The stock is down around 3 % after hours at the time of this recording. For context, AMD is the best performing chip stock of 2025, up 45 % year to date. Prior to these earnings, it's outpaced Nvidia's 30 % rise. Still, it's got a long way to go. Nvidia has roughly 95 % market share in the GPU market. AMD is just 5%. So joining us now to break down these earnings and what they tell us about AMD's path forward is Patrick Moorhead, founder, CEO, and chief analyst of Moor Insights and Strategy.

23:37Patrick Moorhead, thank you for joining us. Great to be here. I did your show, a long version of the show, Prof G Markets, and it's great to be back. It's great to have you back. We loved having you, and we're glad you're coming back. So we wanted to get your views on these AMD earnings, which just came in. Let's just start with your initial reactions. What did you think of the report? What jumped out to you? Yeah, I think the biggest things that jumped out is, first of all, they beat on the revenue side by about$300 million. It's interesting, depending on whether you're using FaxSet or LSEG, they either hit or missed on EPS, but they upsided on the guide.

24:27So I think all in all, a really good quarter. And, you know, I think, you know, the challenge and the opportunity for AMD is that everybody's comparing you to NVIDIA. But, I mean, listen, revenue was up 32%. They had record CPUs across Epic and Ryzen, which is on the client side. They had game console growth, which that has been elusive, right? There was this huge buildup prior to the pandemic, and inventory is being burned off. You mentioned that it's being compared to NVIDIA, and that's certainly what I do. I think of AMD as the other chip company. Yeah. Is that a mistake? Should we not be comparing it to NVIDIA?

25:13That's certainly how I think of it. I mean, listen, when it comes to data center AI GPUs, there are two players. There's NVIDIA and there's AMD. Absolutely, we should be comparing that. And then on gaming GPUs, and AMD is more successful on the console side. NVIDIA is more successful on the discrete GPU side. But when it comes to the CPU business, which is very, very much still an important and growing business, NVIDIA is kind of in that market related to, you know, the ARM-based processors that they put up in their GPU racks. But there isn't as much overlap from a business point of view as most people would think.

26:04But when it comes to markets, absolutely, because everybody wants to talk about hyperscaler, CapEx, and GPUs for AI. Yeah, it sounds like we're getting so obsessed with GPUs, we're forgetting that there is this other thing called a CPU, which is also pretty important in our economy. Having said that, though, you know, I just look at the valuation of AMD. One, best-performing chip stock of 2025. It's actually outperformed NVIDIA. Yeah. And two, trading at a higher forward PE multiple. It's at 45 compared to NVIDIA at 40. So even if they're behind in terms of the GPU, and even if their growth on the data centers is slower and they're doing a lot less in revenue, Wall Street still is very excited about this company.

26:55So what is that all about? What are all the investors so excited about when it comes to AMD and seemingly more excited about than they are when it comes to NVIDIA? Yeah, I think it's from a growth perspective. The big pop from AMD came after their Advancing AI event that I had attended personally, where they came out with not only gave more details on this MI350 and MI355, but they also gave more details in them entering what's called the rack scale. So where instead of a fungible unit of sales being a GPU block, it is actually a complete rack, which about one generation behind NVIDIA, but investors got super excited about that.