Morning Brew Daily
Wall St. Shook By ‘Sell America’ & BlackRock’s CEO Says Capitalism is Not Working
21 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today is the Sell America trade back on.
Then BlackRock CEO Larry Fink roasted capitalism during a speech at Davos. It's Wednesday, January 21st.
Chapter 2: What does 'Sell America' mean in today's economic climate?
Let's ride.
Toby, what's the date today?
Chapter 3: How did BlackRock's CEO critique capitalism at Davos?
I literally just said it. It is January 21st.
Oh, my B. I don't have my Morning Brew daily desk calendar with me here in Switzerland. It's basically the only way I know what day it is.
Desk calendar? Say more.
Yeah, so Morning Brew has this games-focused desk calendar for 2026. Each day of the year, you'll get a new game, trivia, crosswords, puzzles, and they're all really great because guess what? I helped put it together.
Self promo, Neil. No, this calendar really is great. Put it on your desk, put it on your nightstand. If you have a kitchen island, I'm jealous, but you can also put it there. If you want to give yourself or someone else the gift of a productive way to procrastinate, head to shop.morningbrew.com to see Neil's handiwork. Check it out. It's really fun. And now a word from our sponsor, Indeed.
Neil, has AI changed the way you work?
Well, now instead of asking you questions directly, I ask my AI-powered Toby bot questions like, why are you like this? Why do you ask?
Well, we're here at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, along with Indeed, who are diving into things like how AI impacts jobs, transforms skills, and employer adoptions.
Indeed will be sharing real-time insights like that into the global labor market and how leaders can navigate the workforce challenges and opportunities ahead.
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Chapter 4: What impact did Trump's Greenland acquisition proposal have on the stock market?
Obviously, AI is dominating Davos right now. So he was calling attention to the fact that we need a call to action here and we need to figure out what prosperity means.
going forward in this age of ai and one reason why people pay attention to larry fink like what he says is yes he he's the ceo of blackrock is the biggest money manager in the world they have a big stake in pretty much any public company you can think of when he calls the ceos are going to pick up the phone he may be the most influential puppet master behind the scenes in the in the world in terms of the economy so what he says carries a ton of weight in boardrooms across the world
Our next quote comes from Anthropic CEO Dario Amadei, who had some strong thoughts on who should get their hands on the picks and shovels fueling the AI revolution. Speaking at Davos, Amadei said selling the most advanced Nvidia chips to China is a massive blunder with even bigger national security implications. It would be a big mistake to ship these chips, Amadei said to Bloomberg.
I think this is crazy. It's a bit like selling nuclear weapons to North Korea. His comments come as Trump has moved to ease restrictions on sending chips to China, allowing Nvidia to sell its H200 processors to Beijing. This is a drum that Amadei has been beating for a while. Last year at Davos, he said he was worried about, quote, 1984 scenarios or worse.
Talking about the dystopian totalitarian world from George Orwell. Dude knows how to generate some quotes, Neil.
Yeah, I mean, he absolutely shocked the crowd. And one reason why is he went in on Nvidia. Well, what happened a few months ago is Nvidia said it was going to invest up to $10 billion in Anthropic. The financial ties between these companies are very close, just like all AI companies have a lot of connections financially and otherwise with each other.
So to go after Nvidia and say, I think you're extremely wrong here. This is a huge national security issue that you're going to sell these H200 chips to China is like basically giving them a leg up in the AI race that we are currently winning. And the issues are so paramount, are so big that this is a huge strategic mistake.
One way he framed it is that AI chips are essentially cognition or essentially intelligence. He said that doing this is essentially like shipping a country of geniuses in a data center to China. You would never give your smartest people over to your direct geopolitical enemy in China. And so that is the equivalence that he made is that these are the brains of the new era.
Why are we giving them to China when we absolutely do not need to be doing that? Finally, there's also a funny Davos update that I want to mention. There's been a hot market for off-label or fake badges with street prices fetching nearly $1,200. Most of them are selling access to a USA house, which is the base for the U.S. delegation here in Davos.
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