Super Bowl Ads & GLP-1 Competition 2/9/26

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1:06On today's episode, the morning after, breaking down a Super Bowl with super costly ads. This was the first Super Bowl where people were really talking about AI. And painting America's economic future with director of the president's National Economic the council and one-time Federal Reserve chair contender Kevin Hassett. I absolutely believe that we're on an uptick that's significant. I think that the open question really is what's going to happen to jobs as productivity goes up. The hot competition over GLP-1 weight loss drugs direct-to-consumer company Hims & Hers trying to take on Big Pharma with a potential pill.

1:50Former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb on that headline. If that's true, then this is an unapproved new drug because it's using a new technology to try to get the oral absorption. Plus a snap election in Japan, a jobs Wednesday coming up, and Congress takes on housing affordability. Our Emily Wilkins says building is not so easy. A lot of lawmakers want to hold out for the more difficult things, and that sometimes leaves these bills being slowed down and held up. It's Monday, February 9th, 2026, and Squawk Pod begins right now. Stand Becky by in 3, 2, 1. Cue, please. Good morning, everybody.

2:33Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We're live from the Nasdaq market site in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick, along with Andrew Ross-Sork, and Joe is out today. We're here. This is, by the way, the most called-in day sick. Yeah, manic Monday. Of the year. After Super Sunday. Less people show up for work on this Monday than any other day of the year. We just want a little credit for being here today. I just thought it was worth mentioning, just in case. It is. We are here. Meantime, let's talk about what's on the squat planner for those of you who are working today. Here's what's going on.

3:08We've got some economic data and earnings. Actually, not much today, in part. You know, there's long been talk about whether this should be a national holiday. We can get to that. But on Wednesday, we're going to get the January jobs report. It was postponed by the brief government shutdown. Delayed January CPI inflation data due on Friday. And on the earnings front, we're going to hear from Coca-Cola. A lot of people drinking Coca-Cola last night. I don't know. Ford, McDonald's, CBS, Airbnb, and Coinbase, among others. We're going to have to talk about that Coinbase commercial. I don't know what your thought of the karaoke with the Backstreet Boys was last night.

3:43I was not impressed. There were a lot of people who liked the karaoke of the Backstreet Boys, and then they seemed to get offended that it was a Coinbase commercial for some reason. That seemed to be the scuttlebutt. They thought about it a lot more than I did, shall I say. Oh, there it is. I don't know why we're talking about the stuff that didn't work last night. I thought it worked. I thought it worked. I thought there's so many people around the country that started singing. In the opening where you said, we're going to talk about what worked last night and what didn't. How about we let the stuff that didn't work go away?

4:14But I'm showing this as a working ad. I thought this was good. The fact that so many people are talking about it and actually participated in this means it worked. I don't know. My 23-year-old was even like, these commercials suck. Japanese Prime Minister. That commercial or just all the commercials? No, in general. Not that commercial in particular. In general, she was not impressed. The Japanese Prime Minister, Sanai Takeichi, and her ruling Liberal Democratic Party securing an overwhelming mandate in yesterday's snap election. The party secured a supermajority with more than two-thirds of the seats in the lower house.

4:51After that victory, the Nikkei jumped 3.9 percent to a record high, above 56 ,000. The yen actually strengthened against the dollar as well. For the year, it's up by about 3.5 percent versus the dollar. And then in corporate news, shares of Wagovi maker, Nova Nordisk, jumping today. This after Hims and Hers said it would pull its copycat weight loss drug off the market. That's the pill that they were going to be marketing. Nova Nordisk and the FDA had threatened legal action against Hims and Hers. Its treatment featuring the same active ingredient in Wagovi was priced as low as$49 a month versus the Wagovi pills cost of about$100 or more.

5:32Over the weekend, him and hers posted a message to social media saying the company has had what it called constructive conversations with industry stakeholders. And as a result, it's decided to stop selling constructive. Never mind. We can't do this. The stock is off by 15.8 percent as a result. Those guys are always playing fast and loose. I think what's going to end up happening is there'll be a deal made is what I think. I don't know. There's some kind of deal made last last time. Novo got totally hosed by it. So forget it. I don't know that they would get in bed with them ever again, so to speak.

6:04I'm betting that the reason that this happened, actually, is that there's some settlement. We have Scott Gottlieb who's coming on. He's going to talk a little bit about this because you said did see the unusual move from the FDA last week saying, hey, Marty McCary posted this on his actual Twitter on his ex feed. Said that they were looking into this. There were big concerns along the way. And Scott can talk to us a little bit more about this, too. Hims and Hers still ran a Super Bowl ad last night featuring the rapper Common voicing a message that America's wealth gap is a health gap. There's also the ad with Serena Williams for Roe.

6:39I saw that. And that seemed to get a lot of attention. She lost like 35 pounds, which I hadn't realized. AI, perhaps the biggest theme of last night's Super Bowl commercials. There were ads to tug at the heartstrings, maybe make viewers laugh or at least try. and make some of us cringe, maybe inadvertently. Anthropic ran a 60-second pregame ad featuring a young man who thinks he's getting therapy, but the session turns into a pitch for a cougar dating site. The tagline, ads are coming to AI, but not to Claude. The company's in-game ad saw a scrawny 20-something getting a sales pitch when he's looking for fitness advice.

7:21I have to say, I thought those two ads were some of the best. I don't know if you liked them. I don't know if they thought they were cringy. I was, I thought, I just liked the game of it. I know that, by the way, Sam Altman and OpenAI doesn't love them because they think that they misrepresent the way OpenAI is ultimately going to be inserting ads. I mean, I think part of the big issue is actually how ads do get implemented into AI, and I think they will be. He, as he said, first, the good part is that they're funny and I laugh. The second is why he thinks they're so dishonest. Oh, feeling a little hurt, it sounds like.

7:56he had published that, by the way, earlier last week when the ads first came out. But I thought they sort of I thought this was the first Super Bowl where people were really talking about AI. I mean, in a real way. I've got a lot of ads about it. But in terms of the way they were talking about it, I thought it was pretty clever. Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What is that? I want you Alexa Plus. She's not living here. That is full-on AI. One minute we're all buddy-buddies, then the next minute she's going to kill us. Now, Chris, how exactly would I do that? Also, Amazon ran a spot with actor Chris Hemsworth, imagining all the ways that Alexa could kill him before he learns to love it, because it offers him a cinnamon rub and a massage.

8:39OpenAI went for a cool vibe, touting the company's coding agent, Codex. I thought that was, by the way, one of the most interesting decisions, because instead of focusing on the consumer... Yeah, I actually kind of like this one. They focused on, you know, the public, not the public, but actually coders. I thought that was sort of an interesting decision. Yeah. In part because I would have thought if you were going to spend this amount of money that maybe this was the moment you were trying to get more people onto ChatGPT. And that this really was a more narrow focused, narrowly focused ad in certain ways.

9:13I did love that it was about builders. I do like, you know, I think for our kind of crowd, we like, you know, builders and such. but on a broader-based approach, I don't know. Google's Gemini went more sentimental, with a user asking Gemini to help visualize a child's bedroom and a family's backyard. The game also featured ads hyping AI from Meta, Wix, and GenSpark. Yeah, it was probably the predominant theme of this advertising bonanza that was the Super Bowl last night. I just want to say, I know it's not tackling any of these things. The Lay's Potato Chip ad with the father and the daughter.

9:52Handing over the farm. I like that a lot. Yeah. And I thought all the Dunkin' stuff. Ben will always get me with all the Dunkin' ads. I love those ads. They've put a lot into it, but last year's was better. Okay. Yeah. Congress looking to rein in the high cost of housing in America. Emily Wilkins joins us right now with the story on that. And this is something that every politician everywhere is trying to do something about right now, it feels like, Emily. Absolutely, Becky. And that's actually why we're seeing such strong bipartisan support here. So this is a bill. It's aimed at increasing the supply of housing, decreasing the cost.

10:30It is set to be passed by the House today with a strong bipartisan support. And this is just the latest push from lawmakers of both parties to try to address the affordability crisis in the U.S. Now, the U.S. does face a housing shortage. As you mentioned, Goldman Sachs estimates that about three million new homes would need to be built to resolve the issue. The bipartisan bill we're going to see today, it's going to reduce housing and environmental regulations around constructing some multifamily homes. It will also encourage builders to use manufactured and modular housing as those are faster way to get homes built.

11:04It would also give grants to local governments to help streamline building homes by offering pre-reviewed housing designs and include several provisions meant to bolster community banks, which in turn should bolster their ability to provide mortgages. Now, the Senate actually has already passed their own version of a housing bill last year that also was done with very strong bipartisan support. Now, the two bills do largely overlap in their provisions, although some items on community banks and some on housing are unique to each bill. So the next step would be for both chambers to come together, agree on a compromise draft.

11:38And given the wide support, Becky, there is a real chance here that this makes it to Trump's desk well before the midterms and could very much be a big midterm talking point. Becky. Before the midterms. This is something that the Senate already passed last year. And it's going to take until the midterms to get it turned into a law. This tells you why even when you got both sides, everybody agrees on something. You can't get it through the Congress and then passed into a law sooner. I'm giving myself a little bit of runway here, Becky. I don't want to say exactly when they're going to be able to get this done.

12:11But if you look at what's happening on Capitol Hill and you look at the bills that actually stand a chance of crossing that finish line this year, you know how it goes. It's a midterm, which means in just a couple months, any sort of real legislating and lawmaking on Capitol Hill is going to peter down while the campaigns ramp up. But this does actually seem to be something with the momentum and with the legwork in to actually get done, which is that there aren't too many other bills we can really say that about this year. You know, a lot of what has to happen is at a local basis. When you look at regulations, when you look at permitting and some of those issues, people will say it's not a national market.

12:47You have to go market by market. And this is the issue with so many of those things. I guess I wonder how much this actually does. And you also said that they're going to be encouraging modular houses. How does that mean by offering tax incentives? So I'll start with the second one first. So what they are doing, particularly in this House bill, is they're changing a couple of definitions around exactly what does or doesn't qualify as modular housing. And they say that that is actually going to make it easier for builders to say, hey, we're going to be doing this type of house. Changing a couple of definitions takes them over a year to get this together.

13:25You understand why people get frustrated with Congress. I know, I know. And then I believe your other question was on the localities. I mean, the housing bill, what it would do is it would ask the Department for Housing to actually come up with some standard definitions, some standard best practices when it comes to zoning. I believe the Senate bill actually goes a bit further on that in making specific recommendations. But you're absolutely right, Becky. This is something that happens at the local level. And this bill does try to make sure that it is trying to get localities and communities on board, either through incentives like grants or through recommendations or other national standards.

14:01And that's when they're open for business. Wow. You know, I didn't come into this. Well, they should at least be open until September. Right. Unless you're the Department of Homeland Security. We'll see what happens on Friday for that. You know, I like a lot of the senators and a lot of the congressional representatives who come on here. I don't understand why it seems like such a logjam on a larger basis, because I don't think any of them want to be that ineffective. It feels like, yeah, there are things if we can all agree on them, let's push it through as quickly as we can. Right. Right. Becky, the story on the Hill so often is that there actually is a lot of agreement on many of these issues.

14:44But because once you kind of get the low hanging fruit, it's harder to get the more difficult things. A lot of lawmakers want to hold out for the more difficult things. And that sometimes leads these bills being slowed down and held up because lawmakers aren't comfortable voting yes unless they get everything that they want or most of what they want. Yeah, I've heard it attributed to a lot. And it really is not. It's also not an environment that's always conducive. Good, right? Yeah. And it's also not an environment that's always conducive with working across the other side of the aisle. I know you know that very well.

15:15Less so every day, it seems. Emily, thank you. We'll talk to you later. Cheese will be next. Coming up, the Trump economy and America's future, even as tech changes our labor market. Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, joins us. I think that there's a chance that job creation lags. Productivity skyrockets, profits skyrocket, GDP skyrocket. But then all of a sudden, like you're making 20 widgets and you can make 20 widgets with a fewer person. And then that person has to find a new job. I think that that kind of transition could happen. Squawk Pod will be right back. Bitcoin is often talked about as an investment, but it was built to be used.

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17:39Seriously, all of it. And we trust you to make smart decisions. After all, you listen to this show. See terms at discover.com slash credit card. This is Squawk Pod today with Becky Quick and Andrew Ross-Organ. Up in Andrew, Q. Good morning. Welcome back to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We're live at the NASDAQ market site in Times Square. A lot going on on this Monday morning post-Super Bowl. And I know we mentioned earlier that today is the one day that more people call in sick than any other day. Worth noting, next year you won't have to because the Super Bowl is happening on President's Weekend.

18:18And so the Monday after will be a national holiday. So people will be able to sleep in post-Super Bowl. plus they'll be able to watch the Super Bowl on Valentine's Day. Which creates a dilemma of its own. Okay, maybe it doesn't matter if you're already married and you figure you're going to watch the Super Bowl and it's not a big issue. Everybody's watching together. If you're dating, that's your dilemma. Do you go out? If you're the guy, do you go out? Or do you decide to stay home and watch? Do you take the chance and think, hmm, we're going to watch the game? I think you invite your... All your 800 closest friends to come watch with you?

18:53Maybe you have a romantic date just watching the game by yourself with you, with your spouse or your partner, whatever it is. Maybe. I don't know. Super Bowls are kind of for gatherings. But whatever. We'll see. Could lead to some interesting discussions next year. President Trump telling NBC News he's proud of the U.S. economy and that 2026 is going to be even better. We have debt, but we also have growth. And the growth will soon make the debt look very small because the greatest way you have to. ways. You can cut, cut, cut. And we do that anyway. We did that. You know, we got rid of hundreds of thousands of federal workers and those workers went out and got themselves jobs in the free enterprise system.

19:37And you know what? That's called making America great again. Joining us right now is White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett. Good morning to you. There's been a long sort of back and forth about the state of our economy, about how good it is, but also maybe how bad it is. And the bad part being what came before during the Biden administration and whether the president now owns this this economy. Does the president now officially own this economy? Right. I mean, yes, of course he does. The president is the leader of the free world and he's the leader of this economy. The bottom line is that there are some things that moved in the last couple of years that haven't recovered.

20:22So for example, excuse me, there's a big truck going by all of a sudden. So for example, there was 20 something percent inflation and we've got inflation way down, incomes are up, real incomes are growing, but we haven't filled the hole from the inflation. So is it Trump's economy or Biden's economy? I think that at some point, you need to just slow down and say, OK, so when we're talking about whose economy it is, that whose economies are like whose economy is the policy being driven right now? Who's going to manage the policy going forward? Who's going to give you the state of the union in a few weeks?

21:01It says here's what's going to happen over the next few months and years. And for that, it's it's definitely Trump's economy. Kevin, one of the things that we haven't talked about since I don't think we've seen you since Kevin Warsh was was announced. This is the last time we. Right. Right. So but now so now Kevin Warsh is going to have the job, obviously has to get through the confirmation process. But, you know, one of the arguments he's made quite publicly is actually that because of A.I. and the idea of productivity, that there's an opportunity to lower interest rates and that you can do that without increasing inflation.

21:33At the same time, there's now this new question about what's happening with employment in the country. And I'm curious how you think about squaring those two circles, if you will. Right. I mean, there's absolutely no question that we're in the biggest productivity boom that we've seen since the 90s, that the introduction of the Internet and the introduction of artificial intelligence are very similar in the ways that they're affecting the data. I thought it was interesting. You put up a graphic a minute ago where you showed that the biggest outperformer of the Dow was Caterpillar of all things.

22:07But that's 100 percent consistent with what we're seeing, which is that, first of all, that Trump's tax policies are making it so that you can expense capital equipment. So there's big demand for Caterpillar stuff. But then also, AI is making it so that every company from Caterpillar on up is finding that it's more productive when it does stuff. And so with higher productivity, they get higher profits and profits is, you know, we often hear from another network. It's a mother's milk of stocks. And so, yeah, I absolutely believe that we're on an uptick that's significant. I think that the open question really is what's going to happen to jobs as productivity goes up.

22:49And I think that there's a chance that job creation lags. Productivity skyrockets, profits skyrocket, GDP skyrocket. But but then all of a sudden, like you're making 20 widgets and you can make 20 widgets with a fewer person. And then that person has to find a new job. I think that that kind of transition could happen. When when you think about last week in the markets, I don't know how how focused you were on sort of the back and forth. But there really was a sort of the mood music. It seemed to change, if you will. For for much of the week, there was a real concern about tech companies effectively overspending on on one side, whether some of the big tech companies, which had been rewarded for their spending, were getting nicked, if you will.

23:33And then on the other end, there became worries about some of the other software companies and whether they were going to be cannibalized by the big guys. By the end of the week, things had shifted gears all over again. And how you're thinking about that and who you're talking to about it. Yeah, I actually talked to a bunch of my friends in Silicon Valley over the week to try to understand what was going on. And the bottom line is that a software engineer at a typical West Coast, Silicon Valley company has seen their productivity go up by 50, 80 percent over the last year because of these amazing tools that Anthropic and the other countries are developing.

24:08And so what that means is that if you're a 22 year old kid who just graduated from college with a software engineering degree, that there is a machine that can probably help a senior person do your job. But in the bottom line, in the end, these big companies that were going up and down last week, their clients are people that have built relationships with them over the years that they trust. And so I think that it's going to be a long, long time until the client base moves away from the really, really big organizations like Salesforce and moves straight to chat GPT because of the relationships and the data that these firms have built over time.

24:51Hey, Kevin, I want to ask you about the jobs market. We do have the jobs number coming finally on Wednesday after a little bit of a delay. We got some not great news last week when we were looking at the jobs numbers. I guess one was Challenger Gray and Christmas came out with numbers that were the largest number of layoffs we've seen in any month since 2009. You had the initial jobless claims number that was a little hotter than expected. And then you also had the Joltz jobs openings that dropped in December to 6.54 million. And I think the revised number for November had been like 6.93 million.