Hike vs. Cut, FTC Chair on Amazon Lawsuit, and Why Electricians Love Data Centers 9/1/26

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**Kelly Evans** (1:00)
You're listening to The Exchange. Here's today's show.
Thank you very much, Scott. Oil is back above $89 a barrel this hour, and stocks are pretty much at session lows as we kick off the toughest month of the year for the markets. I'm Kelly Evans and welcome to The Exchange. WTI is jumping about 4% as we learn the US launching new strikes in Iran a short while ago. We'll have more details on that in just a minute. Treasury yields breaking out too as the 10-year yield nears 4.8%.
Remember, we haven't been above 5% since October of 2023 Is it oil prices? Is it hawkishness from Fed Chair Warsh last week? Maybe it's a little bit of both. We will debate that. Plus FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson joins us today, fresh off his lawsuit against Amazon, saying the company made $20 billion in inflated revenues through an ad-breaking scheme. Amazon argues customers benefited from their service. And a once-in-a-generation opportunity to get into the middle class is how one electrician's union describes data centers and what they could mean for their industry. We'll talk about their concerns that the political backlash to data centers could interfere with that opportunity. But let's begin with these moves in oil as we're learning of new US strikes in Iran after a tanker was hit going through the Strait of Hormuz. Eamon Javers is live in Washington with the latest. Eamon.

**Eamon Javers** (2:21)
Kelly, not a lot of additional detail here. What we've got comes from CENTCOM in the past hour. They put out on social media that at noon Eastern time, US forces began striking Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targets in Iran. The strikes, they say, follow recent attempted attacks by the IRGC against commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and against American service members deployed to the region. No comment from the White House just yet on this. We've reached out to them to see if we can get any clarification about just how extensive we expect this round of strikes to be, what the strategic objective here is other than just sort of batting back at these Iranian missile launch sites that seem to still be able to hit vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz. We saw that report last night from British authorities that a vessel exiting the Strait had been targeted. No casualties on that vessel, we believe, last night. Nonetheless, strikes like that are impacting shippers' ability to get in and out of the Strait for a reasonable cost. Remember, a lot of this is about insurance prices for those vessels transiting oil through the Strait.
As long as those kinds of attacks are continuing, insurance prices are going to be high, and the economics of shipping oil out of the Strait of Hormuz are going to be affected. So this is the administration's effort here to push back on those Iranian targets, and we'll see if the White House will give us any more detail about what they are accomplishing here this afternoon. Kelly, back over to you.

**Kelly Evans** (3:48)
Anytime we see the oil price back up towards 90, markets seem to panic a little bit. We're seeing the Dow down, S&P down on this. Eamon, thanks very much. Eamon Javers in Washington. Those rising oil prices, one factor pushing treasury yields higher today, but not the only one, as we also have rising yields globally, and Fed Chair Kevin Warsh's hawkishness in Jackson Hole last week. And it all comes as the treasury has been trying to hold down long-term rates. Joining me now for our opening exchange today are Ironsides Macro Director of Research Barry Knapp and OnePoint BFG wealth partners Peter Buchvar. Welcome to you both. First of all, Barry, some would point to the prices paid of ISM today. You saw it up to 71 and say the Fed has to vanquish these inflationary pressures. That's kind of what Warsh himself is saying.