25 Years Later 9/11/26

0:00You spent millions deploying AI across your organization, but six months in, it still misses basic context. Sound familiar? That's not an AI problem, that's a data problem. Siloed systems leave your AI blind, while dark data confuses whatever it does see. EverPure unifies your data so your model can see it, understand it, and put it to work. No waiting around, no digging for answers. Get real results from your AI at everpuredata.com. This episode is brought to you by Schwab Market Update, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Join host Keith Lansford for this information-packed daily market preview delivered in 10 minutes or less, including projected stock updates, monetary policy decisions, and key results and statistics that may impact your trading.

0:48Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com slash marketupdatepodcast or find Schwab Market Update wherever you get your podcasts.

1:01I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer, and this is Squawk Pod. 25 years since the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks. We're going to look at how America and Wall Street have changed. Changed, but never forgotten. Tom Michaud, CEO of Stiefel Company KBW, sits with us today by happenstance. He lost a third of his colleagues in 2001. The best way to honor those who were killed that day is to remember all the resilience, goodwill and unity that existed after 9-11. Plus, in a new era, how we can unite today in the face of artificial intelligence that's alarming the technologists actually building it. When President Xi Jinping comes to America, how much of a priority is this issue going to be?

1:48AI warnings, admissions, and even dismissals from leaders, including President Trump and NVIDIA's Jensen Huang. That's all coming up today. It's Friday, September 11th, 2026. Squawk Pod begins right now. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We are live from the Nasdaq market site in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick, along with Joe Kernan and Andrew Ross Sorkin. It's been a down week for the markets. The Dow's actually seen its worst week since all the way back to March. But if you put it in perspective, it was only off by 2.5 % this week. And we are still less than 5 % from the Dow's all-time high.

2:27S &P is only 2.8 % from its all-time high. The Nasdaq down by about 4%. If you're looking at the Nasdaq 100, which, of course, is the bigger tech companies, it's off by about 5.8%. But we have not seen the drastic pullback some have anticipated. We have seen three days in a row, four days in a row now of down. And you're looking, I think, at four out of the last five weeks being lower as well. Energy prices do continue to climb. If you're watching what we've been taking a look at with WTI, actually this morning they're off by 3%, back below$100 at$99.41. Brent is at just below$104. Diesel prices have seen the real pain here.

3:03They're topping$6 a gallon for the first time ever. That's according to AAA. This has all been happening as diesel and refined products have had a harder time, not only with what's been happening with the Gulf, but also with Russia, with Ukraine and the war there and the strikes they've been doing. Regular unleaded gas prices rising to$4.30 a gallon. And then Treasury yields, if you're looking over the last week, have been significantly higher. It was crappy. The auction yesterday was bad. Oil moved over 100. Yeah. When it was all said in midday, I was like, whoa. You know, we're headed to October.

3:37Tom Lee says, was predicting, and we thought he was crazy at the time, a 10 % to 15 % sell-off and then a rebound by the end of the year above 8 ,000. And then I was looking at the VIX, and the VIX is kind of quiet, but after all was said and done, it was down about six-tenths of a percent, the S &P and the Dow. And then today it's like up about five-tenths or four-tenths of a percent. It's just, but we got the CPI. And just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it's not going to happen. And I just get scared because of it. If it goes 10 to 15, when it's down 15, people are going to think it's going 20 to 30.

4:17Yeah. And just looking at what's happened to yields over the last week, take a look at those Treasury yields one more time. Over five yesterday on the 10-year. Over five yesterday. The 10-year right now is sitting at 493. A week ago at this time, it was sitting at 476. So you have seen some movement there. Or over 100. Two-year, right. With two-year. But that backed off. Right now is at 455. A week ago, the two-year was sitting at 433. So we have seen some movement. As Joe mentioned, we have the CPI coming up. We got the PPI yesterday. 30-year, did you see how high that was? Yep. Where did that touch yesterday?

4:51But the last time it was there? Oh. 19 years. Yes. Since June 13th of 2007, the last time we've seen levels like this for the third year. And the question is, is this a new normalization? Is this where rates are going to be? Also, by the way, if you were watching the 10-year mortgage yesterday, that was pretty concerning. It moved above 7 percent. And those are pretty key figures that feed into the rest of the economy. And OpenAI is reportedly looking at slowing down the pace of its AI development, potentially in conjunction with other AI labs. The Bloomberg report cites details from a company-wide meeting OpenAI Sam Altman had held earlier this week.

5:36The article notes that Altman said other labs may not agree to moderate the speed of their AI work. And CNBC has reached out to OpenAI for comment. And we're hearing from one of the central figures in the AI race about fears that the technology could spiral out of control. According to an Axios report, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Wang told a Goldman Sachs conference that the recent narrative surrounding fears of an AI takeover are linked to the cybersecurity industry looking for new business. According to the report, he told the conference in his words, what better way to create demand than to create a problem?

6:14Who doesn't want their market to be hysterical about their product and line up around the corner for it? Obviously, this comes, though, on the back of so many questions that have been raised, so many concerns, and so many reports about AI agents kind of going their own way and doing their own thing. I was going to go farther than that, which is to say there have been folks earlier on, you remember when Fable first came out, there were people arguing. Well, you brought this point up. Yes, and he made that point. But I think at this point, maybe I'm wrong, when you have researchers, unless we're going to find links between these researchers who are leaving these firms somehow being paid off by the cybersecurity firms.

6:55I don't think this is what's happening anymore. I don't think this is a flex. No, but it's funny. You were saying this as recently as like a month ago you were saying stuff like this too. About a month or two ago, there was a view in the Valley that not that it was a cybersecurity argument. It was a flex on the AI companies themselves. by the AI companies themselves. This is a completely different argument that somehow the cybersecurity firms are sort of putting this out. And I don't think that's, I mean, I think we - No, I think what we heard yesterday, what we heard yesterday from Tristan about some of these issues really concerned me.

7:33The idea of how deeply these things are kind of organizing, doing their own thing, and how we are not even able to completely track it. I think that's a different level of concern. This is the problem and the question. Meanwhile, President Trump is saying he is not worried about AI developments leading to the technology going rogue and wiping out humans. Speaking to reporters after the GOP midterm convention in Dallas, the president is saying he's more concerned with the U.S. maintaining its technological front-runner status over China. Do you have any concerns about AI leading to human extinction?

8:09No, I don't have any. I have concerns that if we don't win AI, we're going to be put in a very bad position. We are leading China right now by a pretty good period. I would say a year, which is considered a lot. He put the U.S. lead at about a year. And you had Tristan yesterday imploring people on our air or our viewers to call the president and the Treasury Secretary and suggest that this is the priority. And clearly, we were asking the question, when President Xi Jinping comes to America, how much of a priority is this issue going to be? And if you believe what the president just said in terms of how he thinks about it, in terms of the AI safety piece, probably not.

8:59People don't want to be doomers. I guess that's a terrible thing to be called. That's what he was saying yesterday, too. If you're a doomer. In some ways, they have ratcheted down what they will say publicly about these things because they're concerned about being labeled as such. And by the way, this is Tristan Harris from the Center for Humane Technology. He's a co-founder there. I just can't believe that, honestly, when I was a kid and read, like, iRobot, I was like, asthma, all of those things. And this is what we were all wearing. And then, you know, Terminator comes out. And you can't reason with machines.

9:30Like, you can't beg them. But, you know, please. I mean, even with maybe you can't with humans. either humans are horrible when things go bad and war and things like that. But, I mean, if it was in there, whatever it is, the algorithms that we are unnecessary, it's like they could, and I was thinking, if they come to your house, but what if it's not humans? What if it really is Arnold Schwarzenegger or something that, and just like this, Andrew, Babylon Bee kind of go both ways sometimes. Trump pledges that if voters defeat socialism in November, they'll each get an equal redistribution of wealth from the government.

10:15Socialism. Investor Stanley Druckenmiller, who, as we know, Chair Warsh, had a business relationship with Druck until all the way up to when he took over, or at least close to that. calling U.S. borrowing costs a little low despite the recent rise in bond yields. According to the Financial Times, Druckenmiller told a Wall Street conference yesterday that central bankers who think monetary policy is restrictive are, as he put it, ridiculous. Heading that interest rate cuts are, in his words, no longer needed. On the markets, Druckenmiller reportedly said his family offices cut investments in the AI industry to 20 % of what they were six months ago.

11:02And as I said, he can't speak for Kevin Worsh, and they're not like-minded about everything, but I think you can, I don't know, I don't think that they disagree strongly on things, at least not yet. Coming up on Squawk Pod, remembering September 11th, 2001, with Tom Michaud, CEO of Keith, Bouillette & Woods, now part of Stiefel Financial. We don't want 9-11 to be two paragraphs in a history book. It's important to turn it into a day of action, a day of service, and that's what we've been leaning into. One-third of KBW's workforce, 67 of Tom's colleagues, were among those lost that day in the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

11:46We'll be right back.

11:51Never bet against American grit or American energy. Through innovation, Venture Global is not only building some of the largest energy facilities in the world right here in the United States, but delivering American energy at a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the time. So while others are busy talking, we're busy building. That's Venture Global. That's unstoppable energy.

12:20When did work become so much work? The meeting about the meeting, the hundreds of files to find one insight, setting aside the things you want to do for the things that pop up. Your workday's gone. But what if the insight surfaced itself? Or you could ship the deck without the distractions. Gemini Enterprise helps you get that done. It's AI that knows your business with agents that take stuff off your plate. Make work less work with Gemini Enterprise from Google Cloud. This episode is brought to you by Schwab Market Update, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Join host Keith Lansford for this information-packed daily market preview delivered in 10 minutes or less, including projected stock updates, monetary policy decisions, and key results and statistics that may impact your trading.

13:10Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com slash marketupdatepodcast or find Schwab Market Update wherever you get your podcasts.

13:24This is Squawk Pod from CNBC. Good morning and welcome back to Squawk Box live from the NASDAQ market site in Times Square. I hate Fridays in September in general. This one's different, obviously, because we're on our minds is what happened 25 years ago. And when we were talking about the breakneck pace, which you're going to talk about again of AI. This seems really recent to me. And I was talking to Dave to Faber. I tried to get him to come on, but he's been out on the West Coast. There were no, I mean, we had no iPhones. I mean, it was a different world back then, completely. And then I thought, what would it have been like if we did have iPhones back then?

14:07But that's how quickly, to me, it seems like. You could bring me from the amount of video that there was. Just everything that is, social media, everything that it entailed. We had none of that. What the world would have been like then? Yeah. I think about that all the time. if the world was, I mean, I hate to say it. Well, what happens 20 years from now? We think back at the beginnings of AI. I mean, and are we happy? And are we alive? I guess it's, well, we'll see. And I'm not talking about just me. That's a question in itself.

14:39I'm sorry, I'm going to interrupt you right now. We have a, what appears to be a very serious, is that the World Trade Tower? Yeah. This is, Mark. A plane hit it? They think so. This is one of the towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, which is clearly heavily involved in a smoke situation, and one would assume there is fire. That was the late Mark Haynes reporting on CNBC about the first plane hitting the North Tower on 9-11. Joining us right now to commemorate the 25th anniversary of that day is Tom Michaud. He's the president and CEO of KBW, which is a part of Stiefel Financial. KBW was headquartered on the 88th and 89th floor of the South Towers of the World Trade Center, and it lost 67 of its New York-based employees on that awful day.

15:29That was more than a third of its workforce. Joining us right now to talk more about all of this is Tom Michaud. He is the president and CEO of KBW. And Tom, thank you. Good morning. it. Um, 25 years later, hard to imagine. Um, it, it, it, incredible because, uh, it feels like yesterday, but one, one thing I will say is that this story is not done being told and chapters are still being written. Um, we, uh, I could tell you what we're doing here with 20 over 25 years. Uh, number one is we love to stay connected to the families to the extent that they wish to stay connected. We are doing that. We also think that the best way to honor those who were killed that day is to remember all the resilience, goodwill, and unity that existed after 9-11.

16:229-11, that morning, represented the worst of humanity. And since then, there are remarkable examples of some of the best of humanity. And really, I don't want 9-11 and we don't want 9-11 to be two paragraphs in a history book. It's important to turn it into a day of action, a day of service. And that's what we've been leaning into. How do you do that? So KBW was a founding sponsor of something called 9-11 Day. I'm on the board. The chairman of the board is one of my former colleagues from KBW. Today is going to be the largest day of corporate service in American history. In 51 cities, we have organized a meal pack for those who are food insecure.

17:03We're going to pack 17 million meals. And I was at the Intrepid yesterday on one of four days. We're going to pack four million meals in New York City for those who need them. And we are encouraging Americans to perform a day of service. Go next door, visit an elderly person, say hello. Remember, that was the spirit that helped us to be resilient and to rebuild. My firm was a beneficiary of that. And we think that's the best way to honor those who were killed on 9-11. You talk about the unity at that time. KBW survived because you had partners, you had competitors, you had people who came in and offered you to help any way possible.

17:44100%. And it ranged from us that week having office space in Midtown Manhattan. Actually, it was BNP Bank that offered us space. We are still in that space today, 25 years later. I showed up first day of work. We could get four people to come to work that day that were able to muster to come to work. Calculators showed up. Lunch showed up. Support showed up. Their IT group showed up. They didn't have to do that. And they offered it and they asked for nothing in return. I'll never forget that. I mean, you yourself were late to work that day because your son kind of held you up, your four-year-old son.

18:25about it. It's a it's incredible. I used to chair our seven thirty morning equity group meeting every day. And that the night before I went to the Michael Jackson concert with clients, said to my backup, I'll be in a little late. And then that morning, the next day, my four year old son surprised me in the shower and slowed me down. He had never done it before, never did it since. Usually he wasn't up that early when I was moving around. And when I got to the train station, I literally saw the doors shut right in front of me and the train left and I was disappointed to miss it. That train would have put me at my desk.

19:00Instead, I was crossing right next to St. Paul's Chapel and watch the plane fly right into the building. Tom, I want to ask, there's a lot of people who were either not alive or were super young at that time. I just read, by the way, there's a remarkable piece that was just put out by Brandon Lutnick, who was only three years old when this happened. And it starts, I don't remember 9-11. I was three years old. What I remember is everything that came after that. And I want to know for the young people who are watching what you think the message is that they should, to the extent they don't remember or don't know, what they're supposed to know.

19:39Well, I'll tell you, there are two steps to that. First of all, there's the real personal part. I was at the memorial dinner this week that Mayor Bloomberg hosted. and I met a family that had three kids who didn't really know their dad. And we talked about their dad and they're going to come have lunch with me, hopefully the next week or so. And we're going to sit down. I'm going to get a couple of other guys who knew his dad, knew their dad. And we're going to talk about it. And so I think talking about it like that is very important. And so we're not going to stop doing that. But I really it gets back to this to this unity in the spirit of what we can do together.

20:20Being on the intrepid yesterday and packing those meals together for those who could really benefit from it. I think you have to turn it into a day of action and get that feeling going again. And I and I think that that's what's that's what's doing something for others, because that reservoir of goodwill and unity really was alive in the city and really in this country. We rallied. We rallied. And I think that's it. we can do that. America can do great things. This city can do great things. We can do great things. And he just and then I'll also give you perspective. So after the weekend, the GSEs failed.

20:55I pulled the firm together. I said, team, we're going to be OK. Thankfully, we don't own any subprime mortgages. We're not involved. But this is terrible. The meeting ended. Folks got up and left. And this one young man waited and he came over to me and he said, hey, Tom, you know, we're going to be OK, because this isn't the end of times, because we've seen the end of times. We know what it looks like. And this isn't it. Yeah. And when you hear that and then all these other things happen, gives you perspective. And I really believe it's telling these stories. That's why I've leaned in. I wrote an essay for Barron's that was published this morning.

21:32I'm leaning in because I want to tell the story. I want folks to hear this. I know how much I benefited from my mentors when they told these stories. So thank you to remember like this, because we do need to talk about it. These are things that are important. Tom, you mentioned the strength of the financial system, the unity, how it was rebuilt bit by bit. We spoke a little bit earlier this morning with Scott Reckler just about the rebuilding of downtown. Downtown's been rebuilt, but it's been rebuilt differently. And there are fewer financial firms there, more media firms that are down there.

22:05What is the strength of the financial system right now in New York City? How would you rate it? Well, the strength of the financial system overall is very good. I mean, capital is at a multi-decade high. The banks are about as strong as they've been in my career. Three weeks ago, I celebrated my 40th anniversary with the firm. So I feel like I've seen the whole movie. And they're as strong as they've been. What is different is the financial services system. 30 years ago, banks were more than half of the S &P 500. Today, they're a quarter of it. And when you look at New York City, you should look at these fintech companies that are here.

22:45And they are equally as competitive. Companies like Coinbase and Robinhood, they might not all be headquartered here. They have major operations here. So New York City needs to be the hub of financial services, even if it's not just the banks. So I think from that perspective, when you go downtown and you see the tech sector and you see fintechs, that's what financial services is today. The small company Grasshopper Bank is headquartered here. They're a small rising fintech company that we know well. So those are the examples of innovation that are about tomorrow, not just about what the industry looked like yesterday.

23:21Tom, I want to thank you for what you've done to rebuild not just KBW, but making sure you're involved. with your employees, with the community, and much beyond. And thank you for reminding us about that feeling of unity that existed and is still there. There's something we need to remember as a community. Well, thank you for saying that. And I appreciate the time that you all have given to it as well. Tom Mischel. Tom, thank you. Thank you. We have more still to come from Squawk Pod. At Venture Global, we think about what can be done, not what's usually done. Through innovation, Venture Global is not only building some of the largest energy facilities in the world right here in the United States, but delivering American energy at a fraction of the cost in a fraction of the time.

24:16So while others are busy talking, we're busy building. That's Venture Global. That's unstoppable energy. When did work become so much work? The meeting about the meeting. The hundreds of files to find one insight. Setting aside the things you want to do for the things that pop up. Your workday's gone. But what if the insight surfaced itself? Or you could ship the deck without the distractions. Gemini Enterprise helps you get that done. It's AI that knows your business with agents that take stuff off your plate. Make work less work with Gemini Enterprise from Google Cloud. Introducing Fidelity Trader Plus.

24:59With customizable tools and charts you can access across all your devices. Try our most powerful trading platform yet at fidelity.com slash trader plus. Investing involves risk, including risk of loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC. Member NYSE SIPC.