About this episode
On today's podcast: 1) A highly anticipated decision by the US Securities and Exchange Commission on whether to approve a spot-Bitcoin exchange-traded fund quickly morphed into a major cybersecurity incident on Tuesday. 2) Boeing Chief Executive Officer Dave Calhoun fought back tears as he said the planemaker must own up to its shortcomings as it grapples with a safety incident that has renewed questions over the quality of its manufacturing. 3) Donald Trump’s claim that he is immune from prosecution was met with skepticism by a US appeals court panel , suggesting an uphill battle in his effort to avoid a criminal trial over his attempt to overturn the 2020 election in his final days as president. Full transcript: Good morning. I'm Nathan Hager and I'm Karen Moscow. Here are the stories we're following today. We begin with the drama surrounding the highly anticipated decision into the United States first exchange traded fund tied directly to bitcoin. We get the latest from Bloomberg's John Tucker. John, what's the latest, Nathan? You're going to add this to the long list of twists and turns in the ten plus year effort to bring a spot bitcoin to EDF to market. Somebody hacked the ex account of the Securities and Exchange Commission. It made a false posts the SEC had approved a Bitcoin ETF. The agency quickly denied any approval and said its ex account had been compromised. The false post on the SEC's X account was up for a number of minutes before the agency clarified it was inaccurate, But in that period Bitcoin posted a jump to almost forty eight thousand dollars before falling back to forty five thousand. About a dozen companies have applied to listingts back by bitcoin in the US. The SEC has until today to take action at least in one of those applications. I'm John Tucker, Bloomberg radio. All right, John, thank you well. Now we want to get the latest on the grounded Boeing seven thirty seven Max nine. The planemaker CEO Dave Calhoun says the company will have to face its own shortcomings as it deals with the door plug belowout on last week's Alaska Airlines flight. We're going to approach this number one acknowledging our mistake. We are going to approach it with one hundred percent in complete transparency every step of the way. We're going to work with the NTSB, who is investigating the accident itself, to find out what the weak cause is. I have a long experience with this group. They're as good as it gets. And Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun fought back tears as he addressed an all hands meeting on the incident. Alaska and United Airlines say they've discovered more Max nine jets with loose bulls after the FAA ordered the model grounded formally. Inspections still have not yet begun. All right, Keren, Well, let's turn to politics now. A federal appeals court appears skeptical of Donald Trump's claim that he's immune from prosecution on charges that he illegally tried to overturn the twenty twenty election. Bloomberg's Amy Morris reports from Washington. The former president was in the courtroom during the hearing when Appeals Court Judge Florence pen asked a Trump lawyer whether a president would be immune for having taken a bribe or ordering Seal Team six to murder a political rival. Trump's legal team responded that the president would have to be impeached and convicted first. At a press conference after the hearing, Trump said that denying him immunity would cause quote bedlam in the country. Trump is also expected to sit in on a hearing tomorrow in his civil fraud case in New York. In Washington, Amy Morris Bloomberg Radio, all right, Amy, thanks, so we're learning more about the hospitalization of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and the lapse in communication regarding his whereabouts. Austin had prostate cancer surgery on December twenty second, and was re admitted to the hospital on New Year's Day because of complications. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby explained the timeline surrounding Austin's condition and when the president knew about it. He was not informed until last Friday that Secretary Austin was in the hospital. He was not informed until this morning that the root cause of that hospitalization was prostate cancer. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby, the White House has announced a review of proto calls around Cabinet secretaries who are unreasonable or incapacitated. Well, another cabinet secretary, Secretary of State Anthony Blincoln, is still in the Middle East, Karen. He meets today with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Tel Aviv. Yesterday, Blincoln said Israel must stop undercutting Palestinian governance and rein in settler violence. Israel must stop taking steps that undercut Palestin's ability to govern themselves effectively extrame the settler violence carried out with impunity. Settlement expansion, demolitions, evictions all make it harder, not easier, for Israel to achieve lasting piece and a Secretary blinkn has met with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Cattter, the United Arab Emirates, and Turkey during his latest Middle East trip. Well, Nathan, we want to get back to the markets and update you on a story we told you about yesterday, It is now official. Hewlett Packard Enterprise has agreed to buy Juniper Networks for fourteen billion dollars. The maker of data center hardware will pay forty dollars to share in cash for Juniper. That price represents more than half of HPE's twenty one billion dollar market value and a thirty two percent premium over Juniper's closing price before talks of a deal emerged. Sticking with the tech theme, Karen Ces the Consumer Technology Association's annual trade show of all Things Tech is underway in Las Vegas, and Bloomberg Technology reporter Ed Ludlow is covering the show for US Day one at cs Las Vegas. The theme is definitely AI everything. Take, for example, Walmart, a big box retailer, but putting a lot of emphasis on a new generative AI search tool in the Walmart app on iOS only. Instead of searching for a specific item, the generative AI search allows you to look for an event or a theme. Then there's a kind of mainstay announcement. What was interesting is Google and Amazon both went after Apple's airplay, So in Google's case, they're working on the ability to cast video from an Android smartphone to a TV. Amazon actually want to step further. They developed technology where you can stream video from either an Android phone or an iOS or iPhone to Amazon's own TV hardware. Ed Ludlow for Bloomberg News in Las Vegas, Nevada. All right, Ed, thank you well. I did mention Amazon and they are also making news this morning at a different front. Bloomberg News has learned Amazon's live streaming site Twitch is poised to get thirty five percent of its staff, and that's about five hundred workers. Time now for a look at some of the other stories making news around the world, and for that we're joined by Bloomberg's Amy Morris Samy. Good morning, Good morning, Kieren. More than forty states are under blizzard, wind, snow or flood alerts. Winter storms continue to blanket the country. Bloomberg meteorologist Robed Carolyn significant storm system that spent the last twenty four hours wreaking havoc from the Great Lakes to the Gulf Coast. Now lifting out of the northeast. The worst of the weather of this morning across eastern portions of New England, but we'll still see snow on the backside of the system from Michigan into parts of the Ohio and Tennessee River valleys. Scattered showers are possible over Virginia and the Carolinas. The heavy rain, though in north in New England, should end, as should the snow, but windy conditions will continue from the mid Atlantic into the Northeast today. Bloomberg Meteorologist Rob Carolyn said at Republican leaders say Congress, we'll need another temporary spending measure to avoid a partial government shut down in ten days. How's Republican Matt Rosendale of Montana tells ABC he does not support the bipartisan compromise on spending. Cast we're still looking at about one point six trillion dollars spend in discretionary spending, and we're going to be holding a press conference with members of the House and Senate saying that we are more concerned with securing our southern border and making sure that that is taken care of than we are in writing another check to Joe Biden to continue his agenda, and the Senate Republican John Thune says they will need a stopgap measure to march. Minority leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged there's just not enough time to resolve lingering spending differences before the deadline. We need to prevent a government shutdown, and so the obvious question is how long does the cr need to be And that'll be up to the Majority leader and the Speaker to determine the links at how Speaker Mike Johnson has said he will not bring a continuing resolution to the floor for a vote. Vice President Kamala Harris was back in Atlanta for a roundtable discussion on protecting voting rights. We have seen in the state of Georgia by example of what is happening in the country, anti voter law laws that have limited dropboxes made it illegal to even provide food and water to people standing in line, often for hours. Vice President Harris met with city and state leaders near the Georgia Tech Campus. Global news twenty four hours a day and whenever you want it with Bloomberg News. Now I Amy Morris in this is Bloomberg Karen, all right, Amy, thank you well. We do bring you news throughout the day right here on Bloomberg Radio, much as Amy said, but now also as she said, you can get the latest news on demand whenever you want it. You just subscribe to Bloomberg News Now to get the latest headlines of the click of a button, you can get informed on your schedule. You can listen and subscribe to Bloomberg News Now on the Bloomberg Business app, Bloomberg dot com plus Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Well, and it's time now for the Bloomberg Sports Update. Here's John stash Hour John Karn. Just two years ago, Mike Rabel was the NFL the year he coached the Tennessee Titans to the AFC Championship game back in twenty nineteen. But after four straight winning seasons, two seasons under five hundred six to eleven, this past year and the Titans have fired dray Ball, and that immediately begins seculation that he could become the new coach of the New England Patriots, assuming Bill Belichick departs. Raybell played for the Patriots for eight years, won three Super Bowls. The biggest underdog of Wildcard Weekend the Pittsburgh Steelers. They have to go play red hot Buffalo, and the Steelers won't have their best defensive player, TJ Wantt out with a knee injury. Mason Rudolph will be their quarterback, and he was the third string QB for much of this season. Tyrese Haliburton has the strained hamstring injury, but it could have been worse. He's gonna miss only a couple of weeks. Haliburton averaging twenty four points the game. He leads the NBA in assists. The next have won five straight since they made that trade with Toronto. They blew out Portland. The Lakers top Toronto by one. Anthony Davis scored forty one. Memphis just lost John Moran for the season, but had to win at Dallas's Desmond Main score thirty two. Minnesota improving to twenty six and ten with a win in Orlando, Detroit falling to three and thirty four. The Pistons blown out by Sacramento. Perdue, number one in the college basketball lost at Nebraska Huskers, beating number one for the first time in forty one years, and second rank Houston, who was undefeated, was upset by Iowa State. John Stanshower Bloomberg sports from coast to coast, from New York to San Francisco, Boston to Washington, DC, nationwide on Sirius exam. The Bloomberg Business app in Bloomberg dot com. This is Bloomberg Daybreak. Good morning, I'm Nathan Hager. As we still wait for a decision from the Securities at Exchange Commission on approvals for the first spot bitcoin ETFs. Investors briefly thought that decision was made yesterday, only to find out the SEC's social media had been hacked. New questions about security at the agency tasked with ensuring the security of your investments. Bloomberg's Crity Gupta is here with us now. To call this an embarrassment for the SEC seems like it might be understating things. Yeah, it's a really interesting and almost ironic situation that you see from the SEC and of course a lot of these bitcoin issuers, because at its core of the concern about this ETF was simply this idea that bitcoin is a very volatile asset. It's a decentralized asset, it's a hard to track asset, and that means that if you start to create a vehicle, in this case, an ETF that allows the masses and the general public easier access to this volatile cryptocurrency, basically, what might the repercussions of that be. Cybersecurity was one of them. Hacking was one of them. So it's only kind of ironic on a day where, or I guess the day before, where largely the expectation was that the SEC would actually give some sort of approval. That expectation also shared, by the way, by our Bloomberg Intelligence ETF team, that this is exactly how it all plays out on by the way, a social media platform owned by Elon Musk, who himself has been quite an advocate for the cryptocurrency, and he's also been at loggerheads with SEC chairman Gary Gensler in the past, not just about crypto but about his own trying to get Tesla to go private. We remember that four to twenty tweet a while back, and the history that Elon Musk has with the SEC. Yeah, and ironically, the SEC is now going to be investigating themselves for the idea of simply did the call kind of come from inside the house at the end of the day, because it's been investigated from the social media platform from ex's perspective about the actual hack itself, and it's been found out that it's actually wasn't a flaw in the platform itself. In fact, someone got a home hold of a number associated with the account. Because the account did have two factor verification, they were able to post something like this. But now there's a big question about whether that person or that individual or the organization was within the SEC. And for that ironically, again, the SEC now investigating themselves for market manipulation because it did move billions of dollars in cryptocurrency. Yeah, it's more than just an irony. It's raising a lot of questions about a security in and of itself within the SEC. Does this affect the timeline for whatever the SEC is going to decide about bigcoin ETFs to have this kind of hiccup, So the expectation is that it shouldn't affect the timeline. So by the end of today, basically we should get an actual decision by the SEC about whether they or not they approved or at least make a decision on at least one of the etf that a filed. Remember we have I believe six that are currently the attention is on. It could paved the way for plenty more after that, So it shouldn't change the timeline. If it does, however, it would be one to mark for the history books, because never in history of the SEC's approval process for ETF regardless of whether it's a Bitcoin ETF or just a different kind of asset class. Do they reject ETF this late in the process. And that's why you start to see a lot of the consensus again, including Bloomberg Intelligence saying that this ETF process for Bitcoin should be a no brainer simply because they wouldn't have let it get this far if approval wasn't in the cards. Is this going to raise questions about the approval process itself? To have this kind of question raised about what when the approval happened? After seeing that Errent tweet yesterday, I think it won't necessarily change the approval process because this was something that the SEC has been very outfront about, very transparent about about their concerns about Bitcoin in particular. I think it might create a little bit more of a hesitancy on the investor standpoint, because this was supposed to be the moment where you kind of let open the floodgates for a lot of people to get that easier access to cryptocurrency and more easily included in their portfolios. But that might now be met with a little bit more hesitancy because it reups, a lot of those issues of security, who's behind it, who's involved, and frankly, the fact that it is a decentralized currency and you can't track it, which is why it's so hard, even in this particular scenario to say who is behind this the cyber attack. This is Bloomberg Daybreak Today, your morning brief on the stories making news from Wall Street to Washington and beyond. Look for us on your podcast feed at six am Eastern each morning, on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. You can also listen live each morning starting at five am Wall Street time on Bloomberg eleven three to zero in New York, Bloomberg ninety nine to one in Washington, Bloomberg one six one in Boston, and Bloomberg nineteen sixty in San Francisco. Our flagship New York station is also available on your Amazon Alexa devices. Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty plus. Listen coast to coast on the Bloomberg Business app, Serriusxmbiheartradio app, and on Bloomberg dot Com. I'm Nathan Hager and I'm Karen Moscow. Join us again tomorrow morning for all the news you need to start your day, right here on Bloomberg Daybreak See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.