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Let's get right to these Youmish sentiment data. So basically, we're looking at a fall for you Mish for the first time in three months, and you have the high cost of living really offsetting any sort of sanguine views on the job mark, kind of the opposite of what the FED was sort of looking at over the last few weeks. Joan Shue, University of Michigan Surveys of Consumer Director joins us now walk us through the decline here and the whys behind it.
Absolutely so, I would point out that this decline is not statistically significant. We should see this as you know, inching down a very very small change. We're still higher than we were two months ago. Being said, consumers are you know, I think reacting to the same data that we saw on the CPI print yesterday. Inflation is slowing, but it's not slowing down as quickly as one would like.
I'll note that the long term inflation expectations actually came down a little bit, so, you know, sort of mixed views on inflation, on inflation expectations, and.
On labor markets.
You know, I think consumers are feeling a little bit more confident this month. We had been seeing a week a bit of a weakening and labor market expectations the last few months, but they did expect the Fed to step in they did last month, and so consumers are feeling a little bit more staple there.
How does just interest rates coming down? Is that just too much of a macro Wall Street thing to really impact the UMISH data.
I don't think that the FOMC announcement necessarily moves the UMISH data at all.
It doesn't really move consumers.
That being said, consumers are fully aware of the interest rates around them, and when we ask them about buying conditions for a large large purchases like cars or durable goods or homes, the spontaneous mentions of high interest rates has fallen this month, So consumers are perfectly aware that interest rates are going to have been falling, and fifty four percent of consumers expect interest rates to continue following falling In the year ahead.
So this is something that's on the minds of consumers.
The narrative yesterday when we got the CPI data initial jobless claims, is that which one is the FED look at, right, higher jobless claims or an inflation narrative, that disinflation narrative. That's not as steep as we had thought. It feels like from the report consumers are looking at those two things. Also, job's okay, inflation not okay.
Absolutely, I mean I think that in terms of inflation, and also high prices, that is absolutely.
The number one factor on consumers' minds.
We have over forty percent of consumers spontaneously telling us that high prices are eroding their personal finances. And it's been that way for quite some time, and so consumers are really concerned about that. With labor markets, you know, consumers are not super concerned about unemployment. They are aware that labor markets have been strong for the last couple of years.
They are, you know.
Watching their incomes very closely, of course, but they aren't really afraid of losing their jobs in the year ahead.
All right, Joan, thank you so much. I really appreciate that. Joanne Shu, She's a Surveys of consumer director for the University of Michigan's they don't make just good football players out there. They make some good economists. It's good economic data out there, and.
They make cars.
They make cars, but not necessarily at the university.
Okay, I see the distinction.
See what you're seeing. So that's all good stuff there. So you missed data coming in a little bit weaker than expected.
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What's really driving here? Are banks?
I mean JP Morgan having like a tremendous move. Paul, you got the KBW bank index also arise in the most since December fourteenth.
You've been talking people on morning. Did you find any cracks here?
Well, I mean, you know, people were on the call talking about net interest margines, net interest incoming. Finally, Jamie Thymond's like, hey, guys, we put up some great numbers. Just lighten up about this, and that's interesting.
I'm with him.
I mean, and then I saw the Wells Fargo. Being a former investment banker, I go right to the investment banking lie man, they killed it, yeah, I don't you know.
And Rolls Fargo they haven't been able to grow in the same way because the asset cap. So if they killed it, now, imagine when the cap is finally lifted. Someone smiling here.
And I don't know if that's a good.
Or bad thing.
As Alison Williams, Bloomberg Intelligence, Senior Analyst for Global Banks and Asset Managers. Allison, what was your biggest takeaway from these two guys.
I mean, things are good, right, and then we got the PPI numbers. I think that's also giving a list lift to the stocks. You know, JP Morgan is fascinating because they you know, beat the interest income. The guidance looks better for fourth quarter, but Jamie making him point to talk down the interest income guidance for next year, and as you pointed out, really just getting annoyed with
people like focusing so much on every little thing. He did make comments about the expenses as we were discussing earlier this morning, just pointing out that look expenses are investments and investments in the future. But generally, you know, showing you know, charge offs coming in better than expected, but building the reserve. I think that reflects conservatism. Wells Fargo also, you know they're they're actually releasing reserves. So what that means is that generally a better economic view
on a lot of different things. They did build some for card and for commercial real estate.
A right one of the many reasons I am not a bank analyst because I focus on all the wrong things. Here's my question for Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo's CEO, they've refurbished more than four and sixty branches this year. I have been in a branch since well before the pandemic. I'm like, mister, I got my app I'm cruising on my APP. I can do everything. Why are banks still have branches?
They get cash in your pocket, I see you take it out.
Yeah, but I've at four or five hundred bucks because you never know when you're going to walk by a crap game. So talk to us about branches and how they what do they mean for the Wells Fargos and the Bank of Americas of the world.
So banks are still building branches there's two reasons. So banks such as like Wells Fargo, Bank of America JP Morgan, there is a cap in terms of what you can buy, so you have to organically build. So any states that they're not in that they think are attractive markets, they are building in those markets. But what they have been doing is reconfiguring those branches, so focusing.
More on wealth.
So the branch may not be that you know, if you walked into a branch, you might not recognize it. There is a JP Morgan branch in the middle of Summit which hasn't changed very much, but but a lot of the branches and select markets are just making them smaller, more sales focused, focusing more on the wealth management business, so not necessarily your your branch of the day of old,
where the focus was on deposits. Hopefully everyone's doing those on their phone because the cost to banks of processing those is pennies.
On the dollar.
John, you know, you can deposit a check by taking a photo of the check and then.
I actually have done that. But there are things like they're doing everything they can to make me go paperless.
I absolutely refuse.
Really, I want it to be so much easier. Big of a drag.
And then you wonder why we make you out to be a curmudgeon, and we're like, we don't do it, you do it to yourself.
I fully admit it.
What would be your questions now, so we got to this quarter, et cetera, what's your biggest question for JPM and for Wells Fargo?
I mean, when is longerth can you get a little bit better? So that is I think one of the benefits of interest rate cuts that you're not sartly going to see in their projections, right because I think they're going to want to see more evidence of that loan demand. Card has been really strong, and the reason why we're seeing reserves for card is really not we have some normalization of credit, but it's really the growth. So when are the other areas going to pick up?
You know?
The other thing is fees. Fees have been helped by the super strong markets, and I think that's if you look at Wells Fargo's stock today, Yes, that interesting comes softer in the quorder, but next quarter looks fine and the markets are doing better. You know, that's that's not necessarily a question that management can answer, but it's something that we think is going to continue to benefit the bag.
I have my checking account what Wells fargos, So I don't think I'm prepared to ask this question. Explain to us what the regulatory and legal issues are still above Wells Fargo and when do they hope to get out from under that.
I mean, the so the asset cap is unprecedented. Is an asset basically after you know, if we go way way back to twenty sixteen, they were they were fined for some different sales practices. They had to make some improvements, they weren't making them fast enough. So within about a year or so, they got this asset CAUP which said, look, you're not allowed to grow from where your assets are today until you know, you fix the things that we
want to fix. And that had never happened before, and so initially the thought was, oh, this will be a few months. So many many years later they are still working to fix that. And you know, since then, you know, that was a prior CEO. So we had a change at the top in terms of management, we had the
board turnover, We've had tons of processes changing. There was a Bloomberg excuse me, a Bloomberg News article recently about you know, sending to regulars, all the changes that they've made, but at this point it makes less of a difference. The Really it really hurt them during the pandemic because they were limited in terms of the deposits they could add.
But it is really about sentiment and flexibility. Should there be another big opportunity for them created, they want to make sure that they have that flexibility.
And if you talk to management, they're like, it's it's a process, Like they can't give a data or a time because it's about transparency and rules. So like when they keep making the transparency and rules happen, at some point that will be lifted. Thirty seconds. Which bank now that is left to report? Do you think does well based on these results?
Gulben Sachs, Golvin Sachs, and Morgan Stanley. So Morgan Stanley is more skewed towards the equity's business right They're trading has more exposure there equities trading super strong at JP Morgan. Those three banks are the top in the business and so we expect to see more strength next week.
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So here's a story I don't understand.
So it's a great story to then talk to Bloomberg Intelligence about a TD Bank is going to pay almost three point one billion dollars in fines and other penalties and face a cap on its US retail banking assets. This is after pleading guilty to failing to prevent money laundering by drug cartels and other criminals. We got the legal side, we got the business equity side for you here. Elliot Stein is Bloomberg Intelligence Litigation analyst and Paul Goldberg
is Bloomberg Intelligence Senior equity analyst. Elliott start with you explain to me the legal story here.
Right, So, yesterday TD Bank became the largest bank in US history to plead guilty to money laundry and virations. They paid three billion dollars, which is now the most any bank has ever paid for money laundry and virations, and they are now only the second bank to have an asset cap imposed on them, after well as Fargo over.
Six years ago.
Although it should be noted that the asset cap on TD Bank is only limited to its US retail bank operations, so it's sort of a smaller asset cap than one imposed on Wills.
Hey, Paul, how much does this impact what investors kind of their view of TD? Three billion dollars is a big number, Elliott says, But they got one hundred and twenty billion a market cap, So what do you think?
Yeah, all right, Paul, three billion dollars is not a big that big of a deal for them as a bank. They have thirteen percent of capital ratio, and they reserved most of it for most of it already just shy have a few dollars there. The asset cap is a bigger issue, and it's going to impede growth the now. They gave some ins and outs what they're going to do trying to accommodate the new requirements from the regulators. They're going to cut their US assets for those retail
banks by about ten percent. It's going to be an additional one and have billion dollar charge. And even excluding that charge, some of the actions that we saw when we ran the numbers, it could be as much as another thirty cents in the earning, So another few percent of the earnings are going to get shaved in the next year. And how long is it going to take to unwind? It's going to take some time.
This might be a silly question, Elliott, but like what was what did they actually do and how they actually fixed that.
Part of it?
Like who launders money anymore?
I know?
Yeah, so the laundering here was by Chinese drug cartels and other drug cartels as well. And I think what's notable is that TD Bank employees were accepting bribes from these cartels. Yeah, Ale a couple of them were indicted previously, a couple of TD Bank employees. So I think that's what made this sort of a more egregious case because you know, usually with banks, you see that their AML
processes are deficient. Here you have bank employees participating in the crimes and that can get imputed to the bank itself, and that's what made it the worst case.
Paul Goldberg, I'm looking at the stock kind of you know, flat on the year. What's the call on a bank like TD and maybe just Canadian banks in general.
Canadian banks are sort of sitting at the crossroads. Has the Bank of Canada started cutting the interest rates ahead of the Federal Reserve. Here they've done three cuts already. They kind of sitting in between the two worlds. One is the slower growth and risk of actual recession, which is kind of minimized at this point, and the other
one is a profitability. The long growth slowed quite dramatically in Canada and somewhat in the US, and their mortgage market is a little bit different than the US when mortgage is repriced to a higher rate, which exposes consumer to a very different risk. And about seventy five percent of mortgages overall, and a lot of them that were issued at a very low rates during the pandemic due to the price in twenty five and twenty six, So a lot of what's going on and what might happen.
People are looking at the Bank of Canada how well it can actually prevent that from spilling over into consumer pains.
So then based on that, when you take a look at the stock is down by about over two percent today, do we see it was down about six percent? I think yesterday. What part of this is reflected in the stock, How much of the macro Bank of Canada, and then how much of this kind of legal fees, etc.
So I think the macro has been reflected in the stock for quite a while because the relative to Peers has been under performing all year, and the story on the whole kind of DML story has been around for over a year as well, so a lot of been reflected as well. I think what people were not really
expecting is the asset cap. And even though as Elliott said, it's only the US retail operations, so the assets of those two operations are only about thirty percent of the total bank assets, it's still kind of unexpected and that's what's pressing the stock. They gave sort of claire in what might be the pressure in twenty five, But the question is, and this is kind of goes back to Wells Fargo where every quarterly poll people are asking when
they're going to be down with the cap. And we've been out there for seven years already, So what's priced in there in that respect is kind of hard to tell.
Hey, Elliet this asset cap, which I just learned about like fifteen minutes ago, and Alison Williams explained it to me the context to Wells Fargos, and now I think I.
Know all about it.
This seems like a real deterrent for regulators to rein in banks behavior here. I mean, writing a check is easy, they can reserve for it, no big deal. This seems like it could really have some tea.
Yeah, and I think it's sort of a new wave of enforcement weapons that regulators are bringing because you did have Wells Fargo's asset cap almost seven years ago, but more recently we've seen the OCC imposed different business limitations on Wells by requiring them to get OCC approval if they're going to expand into new products or new markets.
And we saw that with TD Bank yesterday as well, because in addition to the asset cap, if TD's US operations want to expand into new markets or open new branches, they have to get OCC approval as well. So we're seeing, you know, new tools that regulators are using beyond just monetary penalties, which you know, critics say, are you know, just the cost of doing business.
Which so for Wells Fargo, part of it is for the broader asset cap lift. It's sort of like you know, when you see it like it's nothing, you can point to that like they're going to fix this and then all will be well that that's sort of just transparency and rules. They have just clean up and they have to do better. What is it for TD It's.
Similar to what Wells Fargo went through, but you know, there's no that that's the problem moments sort of exactly, it's up to the OCC. There are steps that the bank has to take along the way, right, They have to put in the plan that the OCC approves, Then they have to implement a plan. Then they have to get a third party independent reviewer to sort of sign off on it, and then that third part already presents it to the OCC, and then the OCC signs off
on it. But there's no crystal clear moment. It's interesting, yeah, where it gets lifted.
It's interesting.
Also, it's like, how do you prove that your workers are no longer taking bribes?
Like what is that?
Like?
What does that look like?
Right? No, we promise, Yeah, it's like proving a negative exactly. Guys, a really interesting story. We thank you both. That was really fun. Elliott Stein, Bloomberg Intelligence Litigation analyst and Paul Goldberg, Bloomberg Intelligence Senior equity analyst, talking about TD Bank.
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So we had the PPI which seemed pretty benign. You have nothing really happening in the front end. Long end though still selling off joining us now as Priam isra chief fixed income portfolio manager at JP Moore again asset management joining us.
There prea what is going on with the long end?
Why the selloff? Is there something fundamental? Is it repositioning? Is it something else?
I think it's a combination of a couple of things.
So we have this really strong jobs report.
Now I know it's one report, it is subject to revisions, but I think the broad based strength of that report I think is making the market consider exactly where is neutral rate? And I think that neutral rate if you were thinking the Feds around two point nine, you know what if it's three and a half, what if it's four. I think that's part of it. So we saw that
repricing starting with that report. The other one is we have an election in less than a month out and I think, you know, we can debate, you know, the makeup of Congress, the presidency, but fiscal restraint is not something either party is talking about. Even in a divided government scenario. I think there's a case to be made that the taxes will get extended, a lot of the spending will continue. So I think the market is reassessing
that term premium. You know, now we're not worrying about growth, We're worried about what is the outlook after the election, and with all this fiscal question mark out there, I think we're reassessing how much will the FED cut and what should be that term premium? How much more should you get paid if you're giving the government money for two years versus ten years. And I think it's the
combination of the two, along with probably some positioning. I think market was long given the previous two payroll reports. We were long into that payroll report. That's why the long end has sold off. I think we're starting to see some value, but before the election outcome and before realizing what's happening on the fiscal front, I think people are going to be nervous to step in and really buy the long end.
All right, pria. In terms of credit, how much credit risk do you want to take these days? Because again you can sit in a two year treasury you get close to four percent.
Year, right, I think, and credit spreads are tight on any historical metric. You could argue I'm not getting paid up enough for credit.
Here's why I'm going to.
Argue that high quality credit or owning high quality corporate paper, even with these tidespreads make sense. So two points on that number one you talked about, I can be in the very front end and still earn four percent. Well, we think the Fed's going to continue to cut. The urgency for fifty is clearly not there. But I think a gradual pace of twenty five getting close to a three or three and a half on FED funds.
So that front end or money market.
Yield where you may have it's felt great to be there, that yield is going to go down over time. Secondly, look at corporate America. I mean we're in a soft landing. This is the time when you should be picking up a little bit more spread. You have to be careful, you know what you're buying. But in the investment greate corporate market, I would even go as far as the high quality high eyel market, so the double be even some single bee look attractive. I mean, look at balance sheets.
What are companies doing with the debt that they're issuing. They are not relevering up. This is not end of cycle behavior from corporate America. You know, there has been issuance, but there's it's been taken down really well. The issuance is all pre funding maturities that are coming up. So companies are very smartly trying to push out that maturity wall.
So I would say, if you're picking up one hundred basis points in high quality IG investment grade or two hundred in high quality HYGIEL, it makes sense as long as we stay in a soft landing, pick up that yield and.
Extend out the curve. You know, maybe thirty years too far out. Five year five year.
Corporate bonds I think make a lot of sense as long as we stay in the soft landing and the data or FED policy is telling you that the soft landing should be our base case.
It's just so crazy because I feel like in the beginning of August it was a growth scare, and then it was a soft landing, and now there's some talk about are we actually reaccelerating here and the FED is going to have to pause now that conversation, like Bostic pointed, our Ophil Bostic this week, supported that this is just such a weird time, like how do you manage that kind of narrative shift?
I completely hear you, Alex.
I think the market flips from one narrative to another very quickly every data point base. I think part of it is the FED keep selling us that they are not data point dependent, but there is no forward guidance. And we went from pricing in twenty five to fifty within a week to now pricing less than twenty five at the next meeting. So I think the market's clearly treating FED policy as data point dependent. But here's where it come boils down to the data is mixed. I
mean there's some signs of slowing. I think we don't know. I think the last time I was on I was telling you I don't know if we're slowing to potential or below potential. I think we're still in that same place before the payroll report. There you could point to a couple of data points on the labor market, and I think it will come down to the labor market, so watch claims. And here's the bad news on this.
We're not going to have very reliable data in the next few months because the impact of the strikes, the impact of the hurricanes. So we're going to have to look at the totality of data as the FED is doing, and then see is it convincingly leading.
Us one way or the other.
I think the market's overdoing the moves on boat directions. We didn't think a recession was very likely early August. I don't buy there's no landing scenario right now. I think we're slowing we Here's the thing. Soft landings are rare. The FED hasn't really been able to pull it off before, so I think it's understandable why the market's skeptical.
But maybe this is the.
One time where somehow they're able to cut rates too neutral or to whatever is their estimate of economy's estimate of neutral at the same time as the economy slows down. So perhaps this is the one time where we'll be in soft landing. But I think we should be careful not to swing from one end to the other end the market is and I think that's where we get opportunities. I think if the market prices out any more cuts in the front end, we'd be looking to buy the
two years. I don't think the FED stops the easing cycle, but the market can certainly run with the narrative in one direction.
Are there any sectors industry sectors that screen well for you given that background?
Sure?
So there's these growth sectors utilities, for example. It was not necessarily I would have said that that's a growth sector two years ago, and here we are electrification AI. So I think within the investment grade sector, I would say utilities make sense. There's areas in communication, in the high yields space where we think, you know, the sector might have been beaten down a little bit, we think there's value there. Financials now, financials have done well, but
we still think that there's value. I mean, I'm going to be looking at the earning and the earning season starting out, and we just got the banks. What I'll be watching is do margins stay strong, because you know, if revenue growth, if the economy is slowing, I mean, we may we're likely slowing to trend or just below trend, not recession. But if we're slowing and companies have already gotten a lot of productivity out of you know what
they could do to keep costs slow. It's going to come down to how much further can they do on the productivity side. And so if margins remain strong, I think then there's a lot of sectors you can look at. I mean there's certain sectors. I think you have to look at valuations too. I think many sectors make sense, but if the market's already priced that in, we stay away from that. Industrials in our view look rich from a valuation standpoint, but financials utility is there's a bunch
of sectors. Securitized credit, I think people look at CMBs and get nervous. Commercial real estate we look at single family rental housing is still very unaffordable, so people are forced into the rental market. You have a job, you're earning, you're making your rent payment. That's a sector that makes a lot of sense. It's positive cash flow so across the Unlike equities, where I think you have to have a viewed tech, I think in fixed income it's like making me pick between my children.
It's hard.
There's opportunities in many sectors.
We appreciate it. Thank you so very much. We always love when you join us.
Priam Israel joining us at JP Morgan Asset Management. She is a fixed income portfolio manager.
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I'm saying really over the last couple of three years that the regulatory hand of the ghost governments got a little heavier on the shoulders of big tech companies, and that includes our good friends at Google. Jennifer re joins us here. She's a senior at litigation analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence Alecuit. You rights here. If the US Justice Department asks Alphabet's Google to divest part of its business as a remedy for illegally maintaining monopolies in general search related
ad markets, we think the dj will probably fail. Jen, what's the thinking behind that? Because there is some increasing talk here that the Department of Justice may in fact ask for some type of breakup of Alphabet.
Yeah, and they've suggested that they are going to ask for that will find out mid November. But the reason why I think this, and I'm sorry because I'm going to have to get a little nerdy with you.
Yeah, bring it all right, get ready.
Here on this judge has adhered so closely to the old Microsoft monopolization decision back in early two thousand, the entire litigation, he said, that is his blueprint, and all through his decision on liability, he cited Microsoft, Microsoft, Microsoft, And what Microsoft says is that the standard for finding that the conduct and here it was these default agreements that Google had to put Search and all basically all
the distribution channels right in the Internet. That to find liability you just have to find that it's reasonably probable that these agreements contributed to maintaining the monopoly, to maintaining the monopoly in search. But what Microsoft said is for remedy, if you're going to use divestiture, that standard is much higher. In other words, you need to kind of have a butt four standard.
You have to be.
Really certain that but for those agreements, Google wouldn't have the position in search it has today. And that this judge said over and over that Google got to this monopoly position by having a better product, not by behaving badly, but by basically innovating and making this great search product that people loved. It got to this monopoly position, and it was only after it attained that position that it
behaved badly to maintain that spot. So I think given this much higher standard for what's called causation in the Microsoft case, and this judge is adherence to Microsoft, he's not going to go that far.
So that was a pretty nerdy assessment, but I kind of got that that definitely works for me. What about behavioral remedies and and what does that mean?
Yeah, I think we're going to see quite a lot of that because the DJ kind of threw in just about everything that's possible here. Behavioral remedies means you can or can't. We are going to make you do things or tell you can't do things, right, it's just how you conduct your business and how we're going to tell
you you have to conduct your business. So in this case, very likely it's going to be Google can't pay Apple to insert Google Search as the default behind Safari, can't pay the OEMs like Samsung making the Android phones or require them as a condition to having Google Play or YouTube or some other really desirable app that the OEMs
want to pre install. You can't condition that access to Google Play on also putting Chrome or Search front and center and keeping all the other rivals in Browser and Search off the phone.
Things like that.
Also possibly some data sharing, because what this judge found is that over the years, through the volume of searches Google had, they had the scale to developing become better, whereas bing and Duct, dot Go and some of the other new rivals didn't have that scale and couldn't improve. And that data is super important, as well as the indexing of the web and the crawling of the web and all of everything Google did to create this great
search engine. So Google may have to share some of that data with some of these search rivals to help them try to get better timing.
I know, you guys bill by the hour, so timing is very important. I just think just screams appeals and years and years and years. But give us a sense of how you think the timing might play out.
This is going to take a long time.
I mean, I don't think we see any real impact on Google soon, So the final remedies won't be decided till August, so we have a long time before we even know what the judge orders. At that point, Google will be able to appeal. They will appeal, they've already said so. And what they'll do is ask for a stay of this injunction. In other words, just freeze it in place pending our appeal. We don't have to do anything,
We don't have to change anything. Usually a company does win that kind of thing, right, If we look at Epic Games versus Apple, where Apple lost on just a very slim piece of that case, and there was a limited injunction that got stayed for two and almost two and a half years. So it was issued in September twenty twenty one, didn't go into effect until this past January, so it was a long time before Apple had to do anything. And I think we're going to see the same thing here.
Does this ruling change if someone else is in the White House, I mean, even if it's a President Harris and she takes a different approach to this kind of stuff, Does this change?
No, It's absolutely a possibility. Now I tend to doubt it, but it is a possibility because we will have different peak decision makers of the DOJ very likely, and those different decision makers could just decide to discuss settlement. This is exactly what happened in the Microsoft case. After Microsoft partially one on appeal, but at least the order by a trial court in that case to break up Microsoft was reversed on appeal, and later we had a new
administration George W. Bush, and the case settled. It's possible. We have heard from former President Trump and JD.
Vans. They're both not a friend to Google.
They've been pretty It's like this is like maybe one area where both sides actually weirdly agree, but they won't say it.
I think that's right.
They won't really say it, but I do think they weirdly agree, And I don't really think such a high profile case that either one of them are going to back off and have some slap on the wrist settlement.
Remind us what else does Google have out there that would interest you?
So we have the ad tech case too, different markets. This is the ad tech stack, right demand side and sell side options for publishers and advertisers to come together and sell advertising on the Internet. And that trial extended at the end of September and that is moving really fast. So the weird thing here, Paul is we could have a decision and a remedy in that case before we have one in the Search case. So you know, it's very which a year ago, September, a year ago finished up.
My colleagues's been following that, and he does also think there will be a ruling against the DJ on liability. But just like I see the Search case, he doesn't see the remedy ultimately being a divestiture or some forced sale of let's say Double Click, which is part of the Google ad stack business.
So we have that.
Europe is also looking at Google obviously, they're looking at the tech stack as well.
They've talked about a breakup.
I'd be surprised if Europe went that far, if the United States courts don't go that far. But you know, Europe has a tendency to impose really really big fines and we've seen that, so that could still happen down the road.
Interesting.
Boy, this Lena Kaye person was FTC.
But different from.
But she's all out there. Yeah she's very aggressive, correct.
I mean, yes, very aggressive, especially in merger challenges.
Yeah.
Yeah, DJ has been less aggressive in the merger challenge side. She has her monopolization cases against Amazon and Meta still pending, but a lot of merger challenges.
Yeah, you have to wonder does that like continue too.
I mean in that even if she's not had the FTC, when we wind up getting a new president, like say President Harris, Yeah, it takes the Is this still a sea change in how we look at anti trust? Still a sea change of how we look at M and A versus a one off, which I think could be something.
I think there's a change.
I don't see us going back to where we were five years ago, when it was kind of assumed the most problematic deals would settle with remedy. I just don't see us going back to that. I think more aggressive anti trustforcement has taken root, and I think it's here. Could there be some easing a little bit of less rigidity, Yes, I think that's possible.
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