INTERNATIONAL

Europe’s Recovering on the Wrong Side of the Road

Sometimes, all it takes is one number to tell a much larger story. That number: 51.6.

Yesterday, IHS Markit's purchasing managers’ index for the 19-country eurozone dropped to 51.6 in August from 54.9 in July. It’s a closely watched indicator of business activity and its slippage reveals that, after a hot start, Europe’s economic recovery has hit the breaks.

Summertime sadness

In these pandemic times, economic slippage often correlates with rising caseloads. And this week, European heavyweights Germany, Italy, and France all reported their highest new coronavirus case numbers since the spring. 

• Spain, in particular, is experiencing a worse outbreak than its peers. 

What’s going on: Europeans like to travel to other European countries during the summer, and countries opened up their borders to capture as much tourism revenue as possible. 

But when you vacation in Mykonos, you risk getting a regrettable bicep tattoo and bringing COVID-19 back to your community. Germany’s government said that almost 40% of new infections were the result of vacationers returning home. Italy pegs it at 30%. 

What now? 

Travel windows are tightening across the continent to slow down the flow of people and the virus.  

But many European leaders agree: We’re not going back to the lockdown days of balcony singalongs. 

• “We cannot shut down the country, because the collateral damage of confinement is considerable,” French President Emmanuel Macron told a magazine this week.

• “Politically, we want to avoid closing borders again at any cost,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel Thursday.  

The new strategy is to identify local clusters of infections and stamp them out before they can spread across the country. 

Looking ahead...the European economy is still expected to boom this quarter following historic shrinkage in the spring (UK retail sales are already above pre-pandemic levels). But the extent of the rebound will depend on reversing the worrying trend in case numbers.  

C-SUITE

And Then There Was One

When it comes to executives named Jeff, Amazon's got a deeper bench than the U.S. men's basketball team. But it'll need to reload: Jeff Wilke, the head of Amazon’s consumer division, submitted his 5-month notice yesterday, saying he plans to retire in Q1 2021.  

Why it’s a big deal

Wilke, a 21-year Amazonian who oversees the company’s e-commerce and physical retail business, had long been rumored as a possible successor to CEO Jeff Bezos. He’s a member of Amazon’s fabled “S-team,” a group of Bezos’s top lieutenants from every division of the company. 

• A spot on the S-team is not like a summer job at the ice cream shop—turnover is extremely rare, so any departure will raise some eyebrows.

But put those eyebrows right back down: Wilke said in a company memo that he’s leaving “to explore personal interests that have taken a back seat for over two decades.” Bezos, meanwhile, had nothing but good things to say about his Jeff-in-crime, adding that Wilke “is simply one of those people without whom Amazon would be completely unrecognizable.”

Looking ahead...three execs were named to the S-team yesterday, including the council's first Black woman, VP of Global Customer Fulfillment Alicia Boler Davis.

ENTERTAINMENT

Movie Theaters This Weekend

After a five-month intermission, movie theater chains AMC, Cinemark, Regal, and Marcus Theatres will all be showing movies in the U.S. this weekend.

• It’s not exactly a red carpet event: As the country still struggles to control the pandemic, only about 1,400 of roughly 6,000 North American venues are currently open, per Comscore.  

Is it safe?

Health experts are concerned that an air-conditioned, enclosed space packed with lots of people slurping Cokes is a recipe for spreading the virus, but AMC is confident its newly installed safety precautions will do the trick. With the addition of plexiglass barriers, high tech air filters, and air purifiers, "You could eat off the floor of our theaters, they've never been this clean," CEO Adam Aron told Fox Business.

Hold your applause: Theaters will mostly be showing older movies like Black Panther and Inception for the first weeks of reopening. But if moviegoers show a sustained appetite for over-buttered popcorn—and chains show it’s safe—we could be whispering “Wait...what is happening?” to Christopher Nolan’s Tenet over Labor Day Weekend.

SPONSORED BY MISO

Flippy Just Front Flipped Into the Future

And stuck the landing. 

What are we even talking about, you ask? Oh, that’s just Flippy: The world’s first autonomous robotic kitchen assistant.

Flippy’s high-tech robotic arm and AI genius can do everything from grilling the perfect burger to deep frying chicken tenders faster than you can say “pass the ketchup.”

And if that hasn’t got your appetite going, consider this: You can invest in Flippy and all its game-changing potential today.

Some reasons to chew on:

• Flippy just inked a deal with White Castle to pilot and undertake a beta for their North American restaurants.
• Flippy is projected to help businesses increase profit margins by roughly 300%.
• Flippy’s had over 10 billion impressions in the news and online with $0 marketing spend.

Quit flip flopping on why Flippy has the potential to be a juicy investment opportunity.

Invest in Flippy today.

EDUCATION

What's Actually Going on at Colleges?

On Wednesday, we asked our college student readers about their plans for this fall. 1,200+ responses later...here are the results:

• 64% of students said their schools are implementing a hybrid model of both in-person and online learning. 32% are going fully remote, and only 4% are fully in-person.
• 95% of students surveyed are enrolling in school this fall, while 5% are deferring/taking a gap year. 
• Of those enrolling, 63% are returning to campus while 37% will be catching Zoom U from an alternate location. 

A global pandemic is a great excuse to skip class, and those who are deferring are keeping themselves busy. 

• Some students are working in their hometowns, continuing their summer internships, self-studying, and spearheading their own business ventures. 
• Others are road tripping, quaranteaming with friends in Airbnbs, and, surprisingly, a few students are studying abroad. 

+ While we're here...shoutout to our amazing ambassadors who are spreading the good word of the Brew on campuses (and couches) nationwide. 

SPORTS

It's Goliath vs. Goliath in the Champions League Final

The biggest match on the global soccer calendar will take place tomorrow, when Germany’s Bayern Munich faces Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) in the Champions League final in Lisbon, Portugal. 

Both clubs are financial powerhouses with a common backer: the Gulf state of Qatar. In 2011, PSG was famously taken over by an arm of the country’s sovereign wealth fund, then plugged with untold riches to make it to this very stage. Bayern Munich is certainly more “old money,” but it too is sponsored by Qatar Airways—no wonder the airline is trying to brand the match the “Qlassico.”

So who is going to win? 

Bayern Munich is a well-oiled machine, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s reluctance to reimpose lockdowns could leave the midfield open for PSG’s Neymar and Kylian Mbappe to roam free. PSG will take home the title, 3–1.

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Postmaster General Louis DeJoy affirmed the USPS’s commitment to delivering ballots on time in a Senate testimony. 
• Palantir, a data analytics company prepping to go public, lost $579 million on revenue of $742 million in 2019, per leaked financials shown to TechCrunch. 
• Turkey said it found a large natural gas reserve off the Black Sea coast.
• Apple fired back at Fortnite creator Epic Games in a court filing yesterday.
• Citigroup has now filed three lawsuits over that egregious payment error last week.
• Robert Smith, the billionaire famous for paying off the student debt of the entire graduating class at Morehouse College last year, is being investigated for potential tax crimes.

SPONSORED BY APOLLO NEURO

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FROM THE CREW

Headline Contest Winners

In our Headline Contest yesterday, we asked you to come up with a funny zinger that could top a story on Taco Bell’s new high-tech, drive-thru focused restaurant concept. Here are our favorites from more than 1,000 responses:

• "Drive Thrus Just Got More Confusing for Stoners"—Matt in Melrose, MA
• "Taco Bell Plays Hard Shell With Pandemic"—A.J. in Germany
• "Go Mobile: Faster Thru Us, Faster Thru You"—Stephen in Hollywood, FL
• "Taco Bell—An Amazon Company"—Henry in Saint Louis
• "Covid Put On Baja Blast"—Sam in Minneapolis
• "Nacho Average Taco Bell"—many people in many places

BREW'S BETS

Weekend conversation starters:

• When Morning Brew reboots our site, which mobile landing page should we go with? We’re deciding between two options.
• What are the unwritten rules of the office? No fish in the microwave and…?
• What’s the worst tourist attraction in the state you’re from?

Millennial time machine: Smile like you mean it because The Killers, Bright Eyes, and Deftones all released new music yesterday. What’s Gen Z listening to? BTS's "Dynamite."

SATURDAY HEADLINES

If you thought Tesla’s stock price made no sense, wait until you read these headlines. We promise that three of these Tesla stories are real, but one is too ludicrous even for Elon. Can you spot the fake? 

1. "Tesla cars are going to play elevator music through external speaker because Elon Musk likes it"
2. "Tesla on tap: Inside Elon Musk’s wild push to add room for a keg in the new Cybertruck"
3. "This dating app is exclusively for Tesla owners"
4. "Monumental failure: How Tulsa, Oklahoma, almost won Elon Musk using the language he knows best: memes"

SATURDAY HEADLINES ANSWER

Paging Mr. Musk: Please add cold brew capabilities to the next Model X.