NEC Director Kevin Hassett & Changes at Berkshire Hathaway 12/8/25

0:00Bring in show music, please. Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod. The top contender for Fed chair, we think, Kevin Hassett, the sitting National Economic Council director. The president doesn't have a tough choice. He's got a guaranteed good choice. And if I happen to be that choice, I'll be pleased to help him serve. Another job on the table? Netflix's takeover of Warner Brothers Discovery's streaming assets. It's a deal getting attention in the White House. I think that may very well be the first time I've ever heard the President of the United States saying that they were going to weigh in personally on a transaction.

0:42But former MTV President Michael Wolff is looking at Netflix, but zooming out at the entire media landscape. The facts here are that the company that is quickly becoming the monopoly is YouTube. Plus, the rest of today's news, Elon versus the EU, and a new org chart at Berkshire Hathaway when Warren Buffett steps down after 60 years running the company. All of these changes are taking place, of course, as Warren Buffett gets ready to hand over the CEO job to Greg Abel. It is Monday, December 8th, 2025. Squawk Pod begins right now. Stand Becky by in 3, 2, 1, cue it, please. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC.

1:27We're live from the Nasdaq market site in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick, along with Joe Kernan and Andrew Ross Sorkin. And here we go on a Monday morning. In time, President Trump saying he's going to be involved in the government's decision to OK Netflix's acquisition of Warner Brothers Discovery's movie studio and streaming service. The president making those comments to reporters at the Kennedy Center last night. He said that he recently met with Netflix's co-CEO Ted Sarandos and flagged possible issues with the deal. Take a look at what he said. He came up. He was in the Oval Office last week.

2:01I have a lot of respect for him. He's a great person. But he's done one of the greatest jobs in the history of movies and other things. And he's got a lot of interesting things happening aside from what you're talking about. But it is a big market share. There's no question about it. It could be a problem. Chairs of Netflix and Warner Brothers Discovery this morning. Take a look. Netflix at 101 bucks. Warner Brothers about 2571. I thought the most interesting piece of that interview was, I mean, there's sort of a whole thing we could deconstruct there. But the idea that he's saying, I'm going to be involved in the decision making is Justice Department is a very.

2:41No, but that's a very unique position to take as the president, at least publicly. I actually I was trying to think back. I think that may very well be the first time I've ever heard the president of the United States saying that they were going to weigh in personally on a transaction of any sort. Now, yes, it's always been a Justice Department that, you know, the lead of the Justice Department, somebody they appointed and all of that. But if you go back to the. Yeah, but we certainly always assumed that Trump would do that. Well, but if that's all we talk about. But if you go back to the famed AT &T transaction with Time Warner, which was called Time Warner back then, and the effort to block that transaction, and all of the commotion and conversation about was he involved in trying to block that transaction or wasn't he involved in trying to block that transaction, and the repeated efforts to suggest that he did not, you know, put his finger on any scale whatsoever, if you recall, that typically the Justice Department is supposed to act independently of.

3:50He said it out loud. He said it out loud. OK, that's the only difference, though, because every time. Yes. You know how many times? Yes, it's been said out loud. Oh, Comcast can't do it or oh, such and such or David Ellison can do it because they've. Yes. Or all these tech companies are giving. OK, so now we. So now it's it's so it's not new news. Well, it's a way to come out of the gates on Monday and say, oh, my God, look what Trump's doing again. No, it's a way to say this is a unheard of. It is unheard of. Even though you knew it was happening already. I think a lot of you said it almost every day.

4:25I think a lot of us suspected behind the scenes that he was involved in these. Did he did he at least make it look good in public? What did you say? At least you'd make it look good and not cop to it in public. That would be better if you would do it more surreptitiously. I'm not. You prefer that. Well, what's so interesting about this administration, and maybe this is the point that you're trying to make, which is it is all done. It is all done in front of you. How much do you love transparency? Love transparency. You do? It doesn't seem like it. How about can we just talk about suddenly? Remember Tom Lee going to be really rocky, but going to be a good month.

5:02Here we are. It was rocky. Was it not? I mean, we were worried about the stock market about a week ago or two weeks ago. Because if you look at everything, I think the Dow's been what I don't know if it actually hit 49 ,000, but it's pretty darn close. Right. I don't think the S &P hit 7 ,000, but it got up there really, really close. We're right on the cusp of actually making all that back, even with all the, once again, there's a lot of worry and angst about the market. Bitcoin, who knows? Bitcoin, 90%. Can I just ask you one other Netflix-oriented question, which I did find fascinating? You met with Sarandos for a couple hours, right?

5:42So I had actually done some reporting. I think you walked out of there thinking that it was okay. Where I was going, where Becky just went, which is, I wonder whether the president's signal to Sarandos or Sarandos misinterpreted the signal, if in fact there were signal. And this goes back to who's doing what and all of that. You don't put a$5.8 billion breakup fee on it if you don't have some sense that you think things are going to get through. Right. Clearly, Ted Sarandos thinks he's having this meeting with the president and thinks this president is giving him the high sign. you go for it buddy I even thought in a more diabolical way okay my original thinking is he met with the president president said looks good Ted looks good um president though has to make it look like they're going to do a lot of due diligence to make sure it is okay because of market share but maybe there was a wink and a nod as long as you behave Ted Sarandos as what is behaving mean as long as you you know as long as i as as you stay in my good favor i think he probably said it looks pretty good for you ted but just you know as long as you walk the walk and talk the talk i in other words the kind of stuff that you says that you say trump is doing to all tech and to all these people they he wants like gold boxes and he wants he wants everyone to kiss up to him.

7:08This is in the king's category. Okay. Right? That's what we're talking about here. We're talking about... We're talking about people come to kiss the ring on the king. We're talking about what hasn't been talked about in the past, but it's good to... I mean, whenever we talk about any company doing anything, we say, whoa, I don't know whether Trump would go for that. So I think that Sarandos got some good... They met for, I think, two hours. Yeah, a long time. So I think that he got some very positive overtures from the president. but I think he could screw it up probably. My understanding is that - Has he already?

7:41Like what is the talk that's coming from this? My understanding was that the president told Ted Sarandos in the Oval Office, look, I'm a free market guy. I wanted to go to the highest bidder. Literally talked about saying I wanted to go to the highest bidder. Yeah. You know, they went back and forth about what that really meant, that he wasn't necessarily in the Ellison's pocket, that there was a conversation about that. And that I think to some extent... I don't think he thinks he's in anybody's pocket. Well, but I think actually it was possible that that was sort of used to suggest to him, oh, the Ellisons are going around the world saying that, you know, they're in your pocket.

8:19And he wants to say, well, maybe, no, I'm not in anyone's pocket. I don't think President Trump would be in anybody's pocket. And I think that plays out with Elon Musk and anybody else who's tried to cross that. Hey, can I just tell you guys about some breaking news? Yeah. Is there some stuff that's come out? You want to finish that thought? No, I was just saying it's almost like, look, the Ellisons are pretty nice to me. We'll see how you do. Yeah, right. That makes sense. I'm trying to read through this. These are some releases that have just crossed the wires. Berkshire Hathaway is announcing some leadership changes and appointments.

8:52And this is happening less than a month from Greg Abel taking over the reins from Warren Buffett, who has been heading that company up for the last 60 years. In these changes that are coming, Adam Johnson, who is the CEO of NetJets, has been appointed to a new role. It's called the President of Consumer Products, Service, and Retailing Businesses of Berkshire Hathaway. He's going to continue as the CEO of NetJets, but he'll be expanding his role by taking up some additional responsibilities. He's been there for three decades at NetJets, including 10 years as the CEO. and Greg Abel says that Adam is an accomplished leader with a proven ability to deliver long-term shareholder value.

9:34Also, Todd Combs is leaving Berkshire Hathaway. He, of course, has been running a big chunk of the money, something like$20 billion or more of the money at Berkshire Hathaway, and he's been the CEO of GEICO for the last six years. Berkshire is saying that he's leaving and he's resigned to accept a new and important and interesting job at J.P. Morgan. He was on the board of J.P. Morgan. He was on the board of J.P. Morgan. He's going to be stepping down from the board of J.P. Morgan to pick up this new role that I'll talk about in just a second. It's the head of the strategic investment group at the Security and Resilience Initiative that Jamie's been talking about, Jamie Dimon, for some time.

10:14We'll talk more about that in just a moment, but just get through the rest of the Berkshire changes. is Nancy Pierce has been appointed the CEO of GEICO Effective immediately. She's been serving as the chief operating officer at GEICO, and she joined the company back in 1986. So Ajit Jain has some very nice things to say about her being practical, decisive, and focused on results. Mark Hamburg, who is Berkshire's chief financial officer, is going to be retiring from Berkshire Hathaway, but not for another year and a half. He'll be staying through June 1st of 2027. He's been with the company for 40 years, and Berkshire is saying they extend their gratitude to Mr.

10:50Hamburg for his exceptional leadership. Charles Chang is going to be succeeding him as senior vice president and chief financial officer of Berkshire, and that's effective in June 1st of 2026. They'll work together for a transition period. There's a new general counsel who's coming in, Michael O'Sullivan, who is coming from Snap, but previously he had worked at Munger Tolls, which, of course, Munger Tolls and Olsen is Charlie Munger's old law firm, and has been the legal firm for Berkshire for decades and decades. All of these changes are happening. And again, J.P. Morgan is just putting out this release on Todd Combs as well.

11:27He's going to be heading up the firm's efforts to make direct equity investments of an initial$10 billion as part of this$1.5 trillion initiative that J.P. Morgan has announced to address pressing needs in key sectors from critical minerals to frontier technologies. Jamie Dimon has talked an awful lot about how in this country we need to be more focused on things like the supply chain, things like defense, AI, critical minerals and mining issues. All of those things that we've heard an awful lot about from the Trump administration. Just places that we found we no longer are able to kind of care for ourselves.

12:05Jamie Dimon has talked about in the last six or eight weeks, he's been talking about this. They put out a release, I think, in October highlighting some of the things that they'd be doing here. The firm already has plans to loan a trillion dollars over the next 10 years. They're hoping to bump that up by 50 percent to one and a half trillion dollars. And now Todd's going to be running this pretty key and critical. Frontier? Ten billion dollars. What do they mean by frontier? I think they mean frontier in terms of new. Frontier technologies. Right. OK. Not frontier. It's not going out of the country.

12:36No, it's not like rolling out in the wagons, the covered wagons. No, but some of the frontiers, like that's, there's top tier. No, no, frontier technologies they're talking about, like AI. Developed countries, less developed companies. And you think of, you know, frontier countries. This is things for an America, I think. And by the way, the council that's heading all of this is going to be chaired by Jamie Dimon. It's got a group, a pretty impressive group of people on the board of this. Jeff Bezos is going to be joining it. Todd will be on the board. Todd Combs, Michael Dell. Jim Farley, Robert Gates, Alex Gorski, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Ryan, a lot of pretty important names of people you probably know, too.

13:18But this has been a huge initiative for Jamie Dimon. And so Todd's going to be running that venture capital arm of what's happening there. It sounds like, you know, kind of setting up to help make America great again in terms of bringing back a lot of things that we lost during globalization. Yeah. Very cool. So all of these changes are taking place, of course, as Warren Buffett gets ready to hand over the CEO job to Greg Abel. That's a job he told us about back in May where he surprised all of the shareholders who were there at the annual meeting. But this looks like a pretty set plan for an easy transition for how Greg's going to be taking over that company again starting January 1st.

13:59He's obviously been running things for a long time and helping along the way with all of these things. But this is the formal transition for that. and they're laying out their plans. Elon Musk calling for the European Union to be abolished. This after the bloc fined a social media company, X,$140 million. That followed Friday's decision by the European Commission to hit X with the fine after a two-year investigation into the company under the EU's Digital Services Act. Now, last week, the European Commission had said that infractions by X, which included what it called the deceptive design of X's blue checkmark for verification, a lack of advertising transparency, and they say the failure to provide access to public data for researchers.

14:40Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling the fine an attack by foreign governments on all American tech platforms. We'll see whether there is backlash from the U.S. government about that. All right, coming up, they've seen this movie before. I saw on Twitter, they said, ask a person if they know Europe's leading tech company. Ask a person on the street. And some people, a very small minority, can come up with ASML. Then that's it. ASML is the top. Spotify. Spotify is number two. But you're a leading financial journalist. You're able to come up with that. Say it loud and proud. Yeah, you're able to say that on the tip of your tongue.

15:24But most people would be like. Arm holdings. Be like crickets. Arm holdings. Come on, that's pretty big. It is. But think of, or when they've got plenty of other problems. But I think Elon, never hyperbolic. This fine, we really should, the entire EU. When did SAP fall from the top spot? The entire EU should be gone. The EU should be gone. Yeah, when did SAP fall from the top spot? Has that been a long time? Oh, I would think a bit. I mean, ASML, I do think, is such an important sort of component part of the whole. I wonder what's really behind it. What they're talking about, the blue checkmark.

15:58I mean, you can go to jail for a meme in certain countries. I think in Germany. Yeah. Cheese will be next. Coming up next on Squawk Pod, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, shortlisted for next Fed chair, watching a meeting he is not a part of but might be casting a shadow over is another interest rate to come. Chairman Powell has done a good job of herding the cats at the committee. If you look at the comments that different committee members were making just a few weeks ago, that it looked like they were very evenly split about whether they should cut or not. A big Squawk Box interview right after this.

16:43Welcome back to Squawk Pod from CNBC. The Federal Reserve's Rate-Setting Committee begins a two-day meeting tomorrow, and the Trump White House is expecting and calling for a 25-basis-point cut. This would be the third consecutive cut by the central bank, hoped by many to help ease the pain of consistently higher prices. But complicating the Fed's outlook are a number of factors. Missing data about the economy not collected during the government shutdown. Some dissension among the voting members of the committee about how hawkish to be towards interest rates. and the general consensus that President Trump can't wait to replace current chair Jay Powell with a hand-picked successor.

17:27One man on the short list, White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett. He was an advisor in the first Trump term and, if he got the Fed nod, would follow another colleague, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, Stephen Myron, appointed by the president as a Fed governor earlier this year. Hassett looks like the man for the job. Wharton School professor and noted market watcher Jeremy Siegel joined our TV broadcast today and laid out the state of the candidates. I think is Kevin, I think in the 70s now, as the probability of the next Fed chair, which Trump says he will announce at the beginning of the new year.

18:04He certainly has gained in prominence. And what he says is going to start moving the market much more than in the past. And Kevin Hassett himself joined Squawk Box. Joe Kernan takes things from here. Joining us now, the aforementioned White House National Economic Council Director, Kevin Hassett, who's, I don't know, it's growing. He's growing in size. And I think I need to call you Mr. Director now, just in anticipation of maybe even greater things for you in the future. No, Kevin, that's all you got. You're at 78 % now on some of the things. So we're going to have a wide ranging talk, Kevin, because it all.

18:45Oh, I just said I was going to call you Mr. Director and then I called you Kevin. But you think about 3 percent inflation, affordability. Should the Fed be cutting? I think Myron would like even more than 25 basis point cut. We might have dissension on both sides. What do you think the Fed should be doing right now? Doing more than 25 or should it be a dovish cut instead of what people are predicting? people are predicting a hawkish cut where they they jawbone that maybe this is it well it looks to me like uh chairman powell has done a good job of hurting the cats at the committee that if you look at the comments that different committee members were making just a few weeks ago that it looked like they're very evenly split about whether they should cut or not and i think that chairman powell uh agrees with me on this one that we should probably continue to get the rate uh down some uh do so prudently with an eye on the data.

19:41And so I think that it's an example of you're managing a committee. The committee was really in diverse opinions before, and it looks like Chairman Powell has done a good job of getting people to circle around the futures markets the right answer. Well, how restrictive do you think the Fed is right now in terms of away from where it should be? How much would you, let's say you were in the job, What would you be looking forward to in addition to this cut and then next year? How many more? You know, I hate to disappoint with the sort of counting of cuts, but I can say that what you need to do is watch the data.

20:18We've got a lot of missing data because of the government shutdowns. We're going to get really back-to-back jobs numbers pretty soon. And so, yeah, I think that the Fed chair's job is to watch the data and to adjust and to explain, you know, why they're doing what they're doing. And so to say I'm going to do this over the next six months would be irresponsible, really. And I know you don't want me to be irresponsible. I mean, you do sometimes, but not right now. No, I do. I do. And I'm not expecting a lot of answers about whether you know whether you are the president's pick or not. But when the president sort of the betting markets went up to 80 percent after that meeting where you were you were standing there.

20:56I was watching. I was laying on the side, yeah. You were standing there and he said, yeah, we've got one in the room, a potential. And I've done your face because it was kind of like and I was just wondering, what was you what were you thinking at the time? Wow, I got it or wow, I'm embarrassed or wow, I wish you wouldn't do this or just whatever the president wants to do. I'm OK with. What were you thinking when he said that? First, I support the president 100 percent. And he's very, very good at like playing the drama of things. The thing I got to say, though, is people are talking about it.

21:30I think the markets kind of have it wrong about how the president has a tough choice. You know, if you look at it, Chris Waller is one of the best monetary theorists of the last generation. He's got papers in places like the Journal of Economic Theory that were really the pathbreaking papers that showed us how to model monetary policy. Mickey Bowman's the best regulator on Earth. I talk to her all the time when I'm trying to think about what about this, what about that, what happened to SVB. And Kevin Warsh is about the most experienced Fed person that there is. He was there during the financial crisis before.

22:00So the point is that the president doesn't have a tough choice. He's got a guaranteed good choice. And if I happen to be that choice, I'll be pleased to help him serve. I want to get into the affordability thing eventually, but I want to get into it this way. We've had a couple of people defend you recently. Brad Gerstner, we just had Jeremy Siegel say, you're not going to be a rubber stamp in terms of easy monetary policy, that you're a, you know, an established economist that would make the right decisions, I guess, to raise. But it does, at 3 % inflation, it is on everyone's mind right now, because that's above target.

22:37That's much higher than what the Fed would like. And I want to talk about affordability, because suddenly it's a buzzword. Look, 23 % of these price increases happened under the Biden administration. Now, the president's been in for not even a year, but inflation is still too hot and it's above where it was when he came in. So you would need to think about, as a Fed chief, whether cutting is the right move right now. And there's an article in the Journal Today, advisor urging the president to start acknowledging that people are hurting or that there's an affordability problem. And he's been saying it's kind of like a democratic talking point that doesn't exist.

23:20How should you be handling this? Because you know, the mainstream media is going to play it up. The buck stops with who's in the White House. And even if it was Biden's problem, the president's getting blamed. Right. Well, the way that in the end, you know, with an eye on the horizon that this problem gets fixed is that real wage growth goes up enough so that that huge 20, 23 % hole that was dug by Joe Biden is a thing of the past because people have money in their pockets, enough money in their pockets to bring their real standard of living back up. The real standard of living in the U.S., the purchasing power of ordinary Americans, has gone up by about $1 ,200 so far this year.

23:56If you look at the great data on Friday that said that real wages were up 2.5 % over the last few months, that happens when you get positive supply in the economy, and that's what drives growth up and prices down. And so what you want to do is lock that kind of gain in where you're seeing real wages coming from positive supply shocks. And if you do that, then just as in the 90s when we had positive supply shocks from the computer and Alan Greenspan was willing to sort of let the economy run a little bit hotter, we have an opportunity with AI and all the productivity that we're seeing to do so again, but to do so with a great deal of caution as you watch the inflation numbers go by.

24:33Because the one thing we know is that inflation hurts everybody, everybody in the economy. And you saw that in the last election. I'm sure the last election was very much an inflation election. Kevin, nobody likes inflation. And I think part of this administration's plan to try and get affordability really within more affordability, I should say, out there is to lower mortgage rates. Right. Have car loans come down. Part of that is the Fed lowering those interest rates. We have seen the 10-year Treasury jump up. It's not a spike, but 414 versus 4 on the expectation even that when the Fed is going to cut rates again, we think, to see the 10-year move higher just as it did when the Fed originally cut 100 basis points.

25:21It does raise questions about how much control the Fed has over the longer term, longer into the bond market, what that means for things like mortgage rates that are set off of the 10 year. We had Ed Yardinian on this morning and he said he thinks it may be that the bond market is concerned that inflation is not under control at this point. What do you think? Well, I think the bond market is still like much improved from the beginning of the year. It's fluctuating around a little bit now. I think in part that could be related to the uncertainty over what the Fed was going to do and signal in this meeting.

25:57The bottom line is that if we get inflation down with positive growth like happened in the 90s because of the positive supply shock, so that there's plenty of room for the 10-year to go down. But that's going to require discipline and keeping a close eye on things. But absolutely, when you see real wage growth over the last three months of about two and a half percent, that's a sign of we're in the midst of a positive supply shock. That's really good news, both for equity markets and for bond markets. I just wondered, is this article accurate? Have some advisors been saying to the president, you've got to recalibrate your response to afford it?

26:39And I can remember during the Biden administration when the Biden administration would blame the feeling that the economy wasn't going well on the media. I used to say that's that's just patently absurd. But that's kind of what we're hearing now that others, you know, almost, you know, ignore the public's feelings about how, you know, they feel about the economy at your own peril. And I'm just wondering, did that ring true to the president, that maybe he needs to, you know, he's in the White House. It may not have caused it, but the buck stops with whoever's in the White House right now in terms of how people are feeling.