DOJ Accuses Visa of Being a Monopoly & Ozempic Prices Grilled by Congress
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Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, the DOJ is on an antitrust bender, the likes of which we haven't seen since the first hangover. Its latest target? Visa. Then, Novo Nordisk's CEO was in the hot seat yesterday as he tried to explain to senators why Ozempic costs so dang much. It's Wednesday, September 25th. Let's ride. ♪

Austin Powers had mini-me, and the Earth's moon is about to get a mini-moon. Yeah, it's not often we get new visitors from outer space, but in just four days from now, a newly discovered asteroid named 2024 PT5 is going to be captured by Earth's gravity and orbit the planet for about two months. Then it'll return to its orbiting the sun like it

had been before. But because PT5 will be circling the Earth for at least some time, astronomers have called it a mini moon. You know, I'm kind of glad that our regular moon will have a younger sibling to hang out with until November. Must get a little lonely out there as a single child moon. See, I see it as quite

romantic actually. Here's this object traversing through the empty vacuum of space until the perfect amount of gravitational pull, the perfect amount of distance brings it together and brings it into contact with us. So isn't that what we're all looking for in life? Our

mini moons. Toby, you got me all romantic. I had a cuffing season. I see your point too. It doesn't, this doesn't happen that often. It's only a couple times a few decades that you're right. The physics line up where this asteroid that's orbiting the sun is somehow pulled into Earth's gravity and safely orbits the Earth. We should say this is not going to crash into us. At least they don't

Think, and it is orbiting about 10 times the altitude of the moon. Although maybe I'm thinking it's more of a doomed love, though, because it's fleeting, beautiful, and then catapulted back off into space. All right, well, the mini moon is coming, and you can't see it, by the way. It's going to be too distant. Now let's take a moment to hear about our sponsor, Wise Business, the app for handling payments in multiple areas.

currencies. So Neil, you recently went away for a weekend on the Jersey Shore, got a nice Airbnb, got a little tan, but then what did you realize when you got back home? I had the keys to the Airbnb in my pocket. You had the keys in your pocket. Nightmare stuff right there. I'm usually a serial double checker, phone, wallet, keys, phone, wallet, keys, but never thought to double check my double checking.

It's why you'd be a wise guy. You don't need to do the phone wallet keys check or worry about your money. They've got a two-factor authentication system, top-level security, and a fraud team working around the clock. And they'd cover my money even if it took a trip to the Jersey Shore? Oh, they'd have you covered from the Jersey Shore to the beaches of southern France to the waters of Rio de Janeiro. Okay, I'm taking my money and these Airbnb keys on a world tour with Wise. To learn more, head to wise.com slash buzzword.

business. That's wise.com slash business.

In its unprecedented crusade against monopolies, the Biden administration has launched antitrust lawsuits against companies in tech, aviation, concert ticketing, fashion, and more. Finance, you're up. Yesterday, the DOJ sued Visa, accusing it of operating an illegal monopoly in debit card transactions. It's the first major antitrust case that the Biden White House is targeting against the financial services industry and a potential threat to Visa's dominance of debit payment networks.

In its lawsuit, the government says Visa is abusing that dominance by penalizing merchants who tried to use payment alternatives while inking deals with upstart fintech companies to make sure they don't turn into rivals. Attorney General Merrick Garland says that's resulted in Visa charging a hidden toll on each of trillions of transactions. And yes, the numbers do reach into the trillions when you're talking about Visa, which together with MasterCard controls much of the

payments infrastructure, the so-called rails that facilitates modern commerce. Visa handles more than 60 percent of the more than four trillion dollars in U.S. debit transactions that are made each year, a position it has abused the government claims. Toby, another day, another antitrust lawsuit from the Biden administration. How strong is their case? I mean, it's pretty strong because

It's so wide-ranging. Visa's conduct affects not just the price of some things, but the DOJ says it affects the price of nearly everything because debit cards are just the most prevalent payment system in the United States. And the case represents...

kind of hinges on the fact that they think that they are abusing this monopoly power. They're abusing their ubiquity to make merchants kind of stay within their ecosystem. They do say that they use it as leverage, that they impose these very big disloyalty penalties if you don't hit a certain amount of volume on their network and then

That in turn discourages these merchants from breaking away from Visa and using a cheaper or a smaller alternative or a competitor. So I do think the DOG certainly has a case here just because of how wide-ranging Visa is and how ubiquitous it is. Yeah, they pointed out.

several deals that Visa made with certain upstart competitors that are very well-known names that may have blocked them from entering the market. Have you heard of PayPal, which has Venmo? You've heard of Apple Pay. You've heard of Cash App from Square. The DOJ is accusing

Visa a couple years ago of going up to these companies who are launching these apps that allow you to pay from your bank account directly inside step visas network and say no no don't do that like we'll pay you hundreds of millions of dollars we'll give you discounts on fees as long as you root all of your payments

through Visa's network, or at least you give them the option to pay with a debit card. Because the way you're going about it now by sidestepping us and going through your direct from bank to payment is not going to fly with us, and we hold too much power. So the DOJ is saying they engage in these restrictive agreements, which we've seen the DOJ go after other companies.

in antitrust lawsuits for, and that is what the main part of their case is, that they're going after these upstart fintech companies and saying, you're about to challenge us. No, we'll just, here's $100 million. Do not do that. Let's get a deal going so we can keep our perch up here. Another thing that the Justice Department is looking at is the fact that Visa has this proprietary tokenization technology. So what it does is,

is when you make a payment, Visa swaps your card numbers, like that 16-digit card number, with a token that can only be used with specific devices or with a particular merchant. So it's designed to improve the security of any payment, but effectively what it does is that it locks you into that network. You can only use Visa's tokens if you use Visa's payment network as well, and that tokenization technology is very, very...

wide ranging and widespread. So this lawsuit may force Visa to maybe divest that token service. It could create opportunities for some lower price and smaller competitors, which is really like the goal here is to open up the market here. So another thing that this could affect is remember Capital One has this deal to

acquire a Visa competitor, Discover. Discover is one of those smaller players in the credit card payment processing network along Visa, along MasterCard. So maybe they've already seen antitrust scrutiny around that. So depending on how this Visa suit goes, we could see that deal break down as well. We should mention Visa's response here. And according to their general counsel, they say anyone who has any potential

Anyone who has bought something online or checked out at a store knows there is an ever-expanding universe of companies offering new ways to pay for goods and services. They say this lawsuit doesn't have merit, and they're looking—they say, hey, you can literally pay with any types of these new apps that are coming online. Walmart just rolled out a service that lets you pay straight from bank to—

to Walmart. So they're saying you're not looking at this ecosystem broadly enough. You're just looking at debit card transactions. But anyone who's ever bought something online knows that there's a plethora of options. There's only increasing amount of competition in this space. So that is a preview of their defense. The DOJ hasn't said what sort of remedies that they'd be seeking against Visa. But again, just another blow to big companies that the Biden administration has gone after. And specifically, they're going after middlemen.

That's been the theme recently with Live Nation, with the FTC sued pharmacy benefit managers last week, and now they're going after Visa. One of the last chapters in the FTX saga has just been written, and it did not end well for Caroline Ellison. The former CEO of Almeda Research, who helped Sam Bankman-Fried build the crypto empire that came crashing down, was sentenced to two years in prison.

prison yesterday. Despite the critical role Ellison played in aiding her ex-boyfriend SBF in defrauding investors and misusing customer funds, some are still surprised she is seeing jail time. Ellison entered into a cooperation agreement with the government at the tail end of 2022 and cooperate she did.

I've seen a lot of cooperators over the years, and I've never seen one quite like Ms. Ellison, the judge presiding over the case said. U.S. District Judge Louis Kaplan called her a cornerstone of the trial, who handed over critical evidence that led to the speedy conviction of Sam Bankman Freed. But he also said he couldn't hand her a literal get-out-of-jail-free card.

Hence the sentencing. Neil, this did come as a bit of surprise, but also not that big of a surprise. Exactly. I think the fact that she participated in one of the biggest frauds of all time, which led $8 billion to be swiped from customer funds to be used to fund risky bets in Sam Baikman Freed's personal piggy bank, like buying real estate in the Bahamas, which is too much for the judge to say you can get off, even though you cooperated more than any other witness that I've ever seen ever.

in my career, you still have to go to jail because this fraud was so big. Of course, it's a lot less than Sam Baichman Freed. He got 25 years in prison, which he started last year. But Caroline Ellison, just a very fascinating story that I think

She became one of the, probably one of the biggest characters in this entire saga. There was so much scrutiny over her as she was going to the witness stand. There's a lot of scrutiny and discussion online about her relationship with Sam Baikman-Fried and how that influenced or manipulated her into participating in this fraud. But I think at the end of the day, the judge said, look, you were a willing participant in an $8 billion fraud. You have to spend some time in jail. It was crazy, though, because everyone involved in this case was singing her praises at

by how well she cooperated. John Ray, who was the new CEO who came in and was in charge with cleaning up the FTX mess, that she said, he said that she was extremely valuable in recovering some of those assets that went missing. And then also the court said that in,

Big contrast to Sam Bankman-Fried. Allison did appear to actually be regretful about her role in her fraud. There was this Zoom call that she recorded talking to her staff that she didn't know was recorded where she expressed clear remorse, which is something that Sam Bankman-Fried clearly did not, so hence the difference in their sentencings. But you're right, there was...

just too much to ignore here. They are calling it like the greatest fraud perpetrated against the American public pretty much ever. So you cannot just let that slide without any sort of jail sentencing time. But you are right that...

Caroline Ellison in particular faced a ton of backlash and a ton of scrutiny. Her journal entries were published by the New York Times. So she has certainly had... SPF leaked those. Right, yes. She has been up against it. Her ex-boyfriend leaked her journal entries to the mainstream media. Her psychiatrist actually gave an interview to Michael Lewis for his book, Going Infinite. So then clearly the...

the crypto community also turned on her pretty viciously, pretty misogynistically as well. So these were all factors that led to a interesting sentencing of two years. Yesterday, Bernie Sanders said something almost unthinkable. Elon Musk is right.

Now, on what subject would Bernie and Elon, two people who don't like each other very much, agree on? That weight loss drugs like Ozempic are way too expensive in the United States, and that bringing down prices to expand access would have huge positive health benefits for Americans.

The issue of weight loss drug pricing was front and center in D.C. yesterday when Senator Sanders hauled in the CEO of Nova Nordisk, the maker of blockbuster drugs Wagovi and Ozempic, for a hearing on why these potentially revolutionary drugs are so pricey in the U.S. and the U.S. uniquely. Here, before insurance, Novo's diabetes drug Ozempic costs almost $969 per month, while its weight loss cousin Wagovi costs more than $1,300.

In Germany, Ozempic costs $59 a month. In the UK, it costs $92. Sanders said that the CEOs of major generic pharma companies he talked to could sell a version of Ozempic for less than $100 a month at a profit. All worth saying, Mr. Jorgensen, Bernie said to Novo CEO, is treat the American people the same way that you treat people all over the world. Stop ripping us off.

But for Bernie, other lawmakers, health experts, and insurers, it's not just about feeling hurt from getting ripped off. The solvency of the entire U.S. healthcare system is at stake. They say the demand for these weight loss drugs is so high that it could bankrupt Medicare. Yeah, there is billions of dollars of revenue on the line here. Novo Nordisk has made about

about $50 billion off the backs of these two drugs since 2018. Roughly 72% of that revenue comes from the United States. So clearly these high drug prices are leading to record profits for Novo Nordisk. Jorgensen says that 99% of commercial insurance actually do now cover Ozempic and around half cover Wigovic. So he's saying around 80% of patients

with insurance actually pay less than $25 for a month's supply. 90% pay less than $50. But then Sanders said, fired back and said, under your best case scenario, the price you are charging Americans for Zempik is still nearly $600. That's with all

all the rebates and all the discounts, which is still over nine times as much as the people in Germany do. So it was a tough look for Jorgensen to cite these numbers when Bernie Sanders can fire back and say, look at other places around the world are getting charged a lot less, even under your ideal scenario. Right. I mean, it is...

This is a very unique situation where something that is so widely used by the public is so expensive. Just look at the best-selling drug in the world for many years. That was Pfizer's Lipitor. That cost around $150 a month before it lost its patent protection in 2011, which is the equivalent of $215 in today's dollars. So the fact that these list prices, and again, there's a lot of negotiations that go on, uh,

when it comes to what you actually pay out of pocket. And we were just talking about the DOJ going after middlemen like pharmacy benefit managers who negotiate drug prices. It does come down, but it still is more expensive than that $215 that Lipitor costs. So these drug prices are uniquely unprofitable

high. And Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, who makes a competitor, say, look, that just reflects the amount of the billions of dollars that we spent developing these drugs. They provide huge benefits because down the line that you're taking these, you're not going to have to go to the hospital or get treatment for other illnesses that come with

obesity that we're helping you out with now. So they say it reflects the value, but lawmakers and other critics are saying this is just too dang high. You're making $50 billion in profits. You got to figure this out. Up next, order your Christmas presents now because a strike at East Coast Ports is looming.

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We had a great summer, Toby, but I can't wait for fall. I love it when the weather starts to change and I get to go into full fall mode. It's the best. You grab your favorite seasonal candles and all of your comfy layers out of storage. The only thing left to do is build the perfect nest at home. A great day starts with waking up in great bedding. This fall, upgrade your space with Brooklinen. Their award-winning blankets, sheets, and towels help you design a space that's comfortable and energizing all year.

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You know, Toby, I was just thinking last week that we haven't had a major supply chain disruption in the past year or so after they were everywhere during COVID. And of course, that was a total announcer jinx because come October 1st, less than a week from today, operations at three dozen American ports could come to a complete halt.

That's because about 45,000 dock workers at U.S. East and Gulf Coast ports are threatening to strike over a contract dispute which would close 36 ports that handle about half of the country's maritime cargo. Depending on how long the strike lasts,

Consumers may see higher prices or shortages for some goods like bananas, while shipping traffic could become more congested than the skookle during rush hour. The workers, who belong to the International Longshoremen's Union, are at labor loggerheads with the United States Maritime Alliance, which represents the ports, about pay raises and auto

automation. The two sides aren't exactly on speaking terms, having not met since June. So this strike seems to have a high likelihood of happening, barring a miracle. So brace for impact. The strike could cost the U.S. economy $5 billion a day.

according to JP Morgan, or about 6% of GDP expressed daily. And for each day the ports are shut down, it would take about six days to clear the backlog. You do not want U.S. ports to shut down because you're right, it does create supply chain disruptions that reverberate for much longer than the actual ports like

the actual days that the ports themselves are shut down. You can divert some shipments to West coast ports where they are actually under the dock workers. They're under a different union contract. So they are still open. The ports of long beach in Los Angeles have been reporting record amounts of volume because they, people are already preparing for this shutdown. And also we're pulling out the COVID playbook again, because that was the last time we had massive supply chain disruptions like this. So some ports are telling, uh,

these boats to slow down or just to park outside the harbor as they are kind of trying to prepare for this eventual shutdown. But you never want to pull out the COVID playbook. We are better prepared this time around because we experienced that. But yeah, definitely something that you...

A strike like this would be incredibly and extremely disruptive. Let's talk about what these workers want. So they currently earn $39 per hour, which is up 11% since the start of their six-year contract that is currently expiring. And many of them, 60%, make between $100,000 and $200,000 a year with overtime payments.

But at the same time, they tell you, OK, wages are up 11 percent. But over the same period, inflation is up 24 percent, which is why it is not it's it's a secret about what they're actually seeking. But it is reported that they want a 77 percent wage increase over the next six years of the contract to make up for all of those wage losses that that were the result of inflation. Then another big part of this is that automation is.

ports all over the world are automating because you have these big cranes, you have self-driving trucks and forklifts that are moving everything around, a very dangerous port, and

ports in Europe like Rotterdam and Asia like Shanghai are already way ahead of the United States in automation. Even the West Coast ports like Long Beach are moving ahead with automation. But the East Coast ports rely much more heavily on manpower rather than automation. And the labor union wants protections going forward that there is that

they don't automate as quickly as they want to and provide protections for workers. So that automation thing is really one of the biggest parts of this contract, and they really don't want to see all of these robots running ports. One thing that is happening, too, is that they are reaching out to federal mediators to try to get the two sides to talk to each other. And one aspect that's been floated is that Biden could kind of implement and force the dock workers back to work using the Taft-Hartley Act, which authorizes himself—

him the ability to actually force them back to work. But Biden said, we are not doing that. Part of it is because he is pro-union, the administration's pro-union, so it would be a bad look. But also, if the dock workers were forced back to work, they could just slow down their working and it would probably lead to supply chain disruptions anywhere and you would just have a lot of unhappy workers. So it is fascinating to see how...

what levers do you have to kind of make these two sides come to an agreement? But right now they are, there's not a lot of movement here. There's not a lot of talks going on. There's not. And I think you should, if you're wondering what's going to happen to my Christmas presents, well, a lot of them are already at ports because shippers got ahead of this. They saw it coming. They've sent all their holiday goods, but one item or one category that could see shortages or price increase is

is produce and specifically bananas, which go into Wilmington, Delaware, which is going to be shut down because there's a big Chiquita and Dole distribution center. So I'm not saying stockpile bananas, but we could see, well, depending on how long this strike lasts, there could be some interesting things happening in the produce department. So buy those green bananas. Usually I avoid them because I don't like waiting, but

Buy the green ones right now. Buy bananas now and maybe two months they'll be ready. Yeah, banana bread is coming. When you are the most famous tech reviewer on the internet and you launch a product, you better nail it or else the internet is going to come for you. Well, Marques Brownlee, aka MKBHD, unfortunately has the entire internet coming for him.

The man who has made and broken the fortunes of companies through the reviews he posts to his YouTube channel stepped into the arena himself this week, launching an app called Panels that you can use to browse and download HD wallpapers for your phone. The internet immediately decried Panels for its lack of ambition and how it smelled of a cash grab that MKBHD himself would most likely not approve of. Plus, as his haters gleefully pointed out, it's not even a good app in its current form. It costs $1,000,

$11.99 a month to access the premium version, while the free tier is riddled with ads and doesn't let you download anything with high resolution. Now, in Brownlee's defense, when you Google, where does MKBHD get his blank, it autofills wallpapers, so clearly people were searching for something like this, but launching a whole paid app to curate wallpapers that are widely available for free online, it just felt too safe,

and really tanked his credibility in a lot of people's eyes. It did. I mean, there was certainly a whiff of hypocrisy, according to critics, because one drum that MKBHD has been sounding recently as he's been reviewing various products has been stop releasing things that aren't

Ready. And he did this with the Fisker vehicle. He went out and got the one on the market and Fisker said, Hey, we're not ready with that yet. And we'll do the update. Just wait for the next update. And he said, no, I'm going to review the one that you put out on the market. And he did that with several other gadgets. And that's been a theme that he sounded over his recent reviews.

And sort of something similar is happening with this particular product. He goes, yeah, it's not ready, totally ready yet. Thank you for the feedback. He wrote, part of building in public is getting mass feedback immediately, which is pretty dope. It's almost exactly like publishing a YouTube video. So he kind of spun it to say, hey, I love getting feedback where this is just a V1 thing and we're going to incorporate all of your thoughts and build a newer product. So

I don't know how much longer he can continue to say that, you know, beat the drum that products are not ready if you actually released one that is not ready. Another issue that users had was that this app, which is, again, just giving you wallpapers, asks for a curious amount of permissions, including your location, usage data, diagnostics, contact info, search history. Everyone's like, why are we giving all this over to you? This is a wallpaper app. He did jump on and say, like,

As you said, we are working to fix that. But I will say it's just hard to justify any app that curates wallpapers being the same price as a Spotify subscription, for instance, and then also having to watch two ads before downloading the standard definition of wallpaper. People are like, what is going on here, man? It's just not that good. The final aspect that I think created some tension with his listener base is that a lot of these apps

a lot of these wallpapers look AI generated. And he did say like, yeah, artists are allowed to use AI. So even if you were to take the stance that, oh, he's actually uplifting a lot of artists here. He's doing a revenue sharing agreement with the artists who put their stuff on the app. If those artists are just flooding the platform with artificially and, uh,

AI-generated wallpaper apps. Maybe it is defeating the purpose of that artist-first kind of mentality. So just so many different vectors of attack here, so many different ways that you could criticize this approach, which is tough because I'm an MKBHCA fan. He had a sterling reputation. This kind of dented his credibility a bit, but

It may not be long lasting. I did look at the app store this morning. Panels is the number one app in the photo and video category. It's number 10 overall in free apps. So despite what he is going to be fine, he's making a nice chunk of change off of this.

Tanking in professional sports is a well-known phenomenon at this point. The idea is to be really bad for one season, tear everything down, then rebuild with better players secured through high draft picks. But this year, Major League Baseball's Chicago White Sox have taken tanking to an entirely different level.

Despite their win last night, they are tied for the losingest baseball team ever, racking up 120 L's and only 37 W's. They are so bad that they have a negative run differential of 319. They are so bad that their .231 winning percentage through 156 games is the lowest since 1901, but truly the most wild statistic about their abject failure to win baseball games is

is that they are spending a lot of money to do it. Their payroll is $130 million, which is higher than five teams that are heading to the playoffs. Neil, how in the world did the White Sox get this historically bad? I mean, this is insane. One more loss and then they're going to have the worst season of any baseball team in history. And baseball has been around for a while. It does seem to be some of the same things that we've talked about with companies that have –

had new leadership recently, like Nike and Starbucks, just general dysfunction in the front office or management, bad hires, a turnaround plan that just didn't pan out at all. So all of these things kind of confluence to just have

terrible season. And then in baseball, it's not like football where there's only 17 games where, you know, you can just lose, you know, you can lose 17 games and say, hey, it's only 17 games. Let's go on to the next season. It's 162 games. It's an entire summer. That's a huge slog. So the White Sox fans and its social media team have kind of been poking fun at themselves. I think they want this to actually happen, to have that

badge of dishonor. So the social media team has been doing such a funny job after recent losses that usually a social media team or a social media account for a sports team will post the final score and they've just been turning it into jokes for the past week. Someone actually at last night's game proposed to their girlfriend, which

I don't know how romantic that is, but last night was supposed to be the day where they set the losing record, 121 losses, but they actually came back and won, which is the first time they've had a comeback after the seventh inning all year. So people are kind of embracing this situation.

badge of dishonor, as you want to call it. What makes this so poetically just, too, is that Jerry Reinsdorf, who is the owner of the team, also presided over the 90s Chicago Bulls. So he has seen both the most unstoppable version of a team in one sport, the 72-win 98 Bulls, as well as the most stoppable version of a team in the 2024

Chicago White Sox. So you got to love the poetic symmetry of that. Yeah. So they're just a few games left of the regular season. So we'll see whether the White Sox lose another one and set the record or maybe they'll just stay tied if they win out. That's going to be

That is all the time we have for today. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have an excellent Wednesday. For any feedback, questions or comments on the show, send an email to morningbrewdailyatmorningbrew.com. And please share Morning Brew Daily with your friends, family and coworkers so you don't have to explain why Visa might be a monopoly. As always, Toby is here with a sharing suggestion if you need it.

I want you to share today's episode with your mini moon. Maybe it's your pal who's always with you, or maybe it's your doomed lover. Whatever interpretation of the mini moon you want, share it with that. All right, let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Uchenna Waogu is our technical director. Billy Menino is on audio. Hair and Makeup is stocking up on bananas. Devin Emery is our chief content officer, and our show is a production of Morning Brew.

Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow. Nvidia's up 500%. Analysts forecasting a recession. Earnings season is here. The sky is falling. Just kidding. Everyone is getting rich. You've heard it all when it comes to the stock market. But rather than listen to the talking heads squawking on your TV, check out

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