Andrew here. C.E.O.s have been almost entirely unwilling to publicly criticize President Trump. That makes a new opinion article by Ken Griffin, the billionaire financier and longtime Republican, decrying Trump’s efforts to undermine Fed independence all the more noteworthy. We’ve got a full rundown of his critique, as well as a fascinating new proposal by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to narrow the central bank’s remit.
We also highlight a new report about JPMorgan Chase’s connection with Jeffrey Epstein. And take a look at our Picture of the Day from Sunday’s U.S. Open men’s championship match — and who was in Rolex’s corporate suite with Trump.
“Steep costs”
A parade of economists and former Treasury secretaries have voiced alarm at President Trump’s assault on Fed independence. But business leaders have been mostly mum, despite fears that the threat could undermine investor confidence in U.S. institutions and financial assets, including the dollar.
Ken Griffin just broke that silence.
Griffin, the billionaire C.E.O. of Citadel, and Anil Kashyap, a University of Chicago professor and adviser to the Chicago Fed, warned that Trump was playing a “risky game” by bullying the central bank into lowering interest rates, seeking to fire a governor and sacking the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after disappointing jobs numbers.
These actions carry “steep costs,” Griffin and Kashyap wrote in an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal on Sunday. They added:
Together, these developments highlight risks that recall experiences in emerging markets where political influence eroded institutional credibility. While the U.S. benefits from a large stock of credibility accumulated over decades, it isn’t limitless. If eroded, markets will demand far higher interest rates for longer-term debt.
Undermining Fed independence could backfire on Trump, they warn, potentially “stoking both higher inflation and higher long-term rates.” That would create another headwind for corporate profits.
It was some of the most concrete criticism of Trump yet by Griffin, who despite voting for Trump last year has openly criticized actions he doesn’t like.
The Trump administration has sent mixed messages on Fed independence. It was the hot topic last week during the Senate confirmation hearing of Stephen Miran, the economic adviser up for a temporary Fed governor role. Miran stunned some Democrat senators by declaring that he intended to take just a temporary leave of absence from his White House job if confirmed, even as he pledged to be independent.
And Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called the principle of Fed independence “fundamental to the economic success of the United States” in a recent essay in The International Economy Magazine, but warned that the Fed’s powerful monetary policy tools give it a potentially distortionary force over the markets and wider economy.
He also argued in an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal last week for giving the Fed a narrower remit. He wrote:
The Fed’s new operating model is effectively a gain-of-function monetary policy experiment. Overuse of nonstandard policies, mission creep and institutional bloat threaten the central bank’s independence. The Fed must change course.
Will other C.E.O.s speak up now? Though many have privately complained about Trump’s attacks on the Fed (and his other policies), they’ve been largely circumspect publicly, keeping their grumbling to comments about trade and immigration policies in earnings calls.
But with the S&P 500 near a record, suggesting investors aren’t feeling spooked, it’s not clear whether more corporate leaders will join Griffin in public criticism.
HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING
President Trump backs I.C.E. raid on Georgia battery plant. The arrest by immigration officials last week of 475 workers at the Hyundai Motor and LG Energy Solution site in the state has created a diplomatic rift with Seoul. The president threw ties with the trading partner into further question, acknowledging that the U.S. welcomed this kind of overseas cooperation, but stressed that the workers must be in the country legally.
An S.E.C. task force will investigate securities fraud by foreign firms. The regulator said the group would examine companies from countries like China where “governmental control and other factors” put investors at risk of “pump-and-dump” schemes and other market manipulation. Paul Atkins, the S.E.C. chairman, also said the agency would review its disclosure rules, which allow foreign companies to avoid some reporting requirements.
Inflation and jobs will be in focus this week. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is scheduled to publish its revised payroll benchmark number on Tuesday, which will probably be closely scrutinized given last week’s jobs report. The Consumer Price Index report for August is set for release on Thursday, while the University of Michigan issues its consumer-sentiment and inflation-expectation surveys on Friday. Also on deck are quarterly results from Oracle and GameStop on Tuesday and Adobe and Kroger on Thursday.
The Epstein alarms that rang inside JPMorgan
Jeffrey Epstein died six years ago, but the disgraced financier’s crimes still haunt prominent figures around the world, including President Trump.
One institution that has been criticized for its ties to Epstein is JPMorgan Chase, which banked him for decades. The Times Magazine takes a deep look at the Wall Street giant’s relationship with Epstein, including how several executives warned that the bank should cut ties.
Among them was William Langford, who as JPMorgan’s head of compliance was alarmed by several red flags. In 2011, he approached Mary Erdoes, the head of the bank’s asset management group with his concerns, according to The Times Magazine:
He told her that Epstein should be “exited.” Erdoes, however, said [Jes Staley, a longtime JPMorgan executive] was responsible for the Epstein relationship — an odd deflection, because Staley now worked in the investment-banking division, which didn’t control Epstein’s private-banking accounts. Yet JPMorgan’s “rapid response” team — activated at Langford’s urging — reached a similar conclusion: Langford should talk to Staley, because he “is friends with Epstein. He needs to understand the potential backlash to the firm given all of the work done to root out clients involved in human trafficking.”
The meeting took place in January 2011. Staley by then had a reputation for running interference on Epstein’s behalf, repeatedly telling colleagues that he would trust Epstein with his daughters. (He meant it literally: Staley arranged for Epstein to coach one of his daughters on her education and career.) Now he allotted all of 15 minutes for the discussion with Langford. Langford said in a deposition that he started off by quickly explaining the human-trafficking initiative. In that context, how could the bank justify working with someone who had pleaded guilty to a sex crime and was now under investigation for sex trafficking?
Staley pushed back, saying that Epstein hoped to get his plea deal overturned in court. He told Langford to speak with Epstein’s attorneys. Langford was surprised — he had never spoken to a client’s criminal lawyer — but a month later, he got on the phone with Ken Starr, the former special prosecutor who pursued Bill Clinton for his sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky and who was now representing Epstein. “Got all my points in,” Starr reported to his client afterward. “I said, no crimes, period. Inappropriate, yes. criminal, no. Bragged on you.”
Langford wasn’t the only one worried about JPMorgan’s ties to Epstein. Stephen Cutler, then the bank’s general counsel, saw the financier as a potential danger to the bank. (Cutler even met with Epstein in 2011 to assess the risks.)
Ultimately, however, JPMorgan kept Epstein as a client — until he was arrested in 2019 and charged with sex trafficking. A spokesman for the bank said in a statement that its relationship with him “was a mistake and in hindsight we regret it, but we did not help him commit his heinous crimes.”
Pic of the day
President Trump at Sunday’s U.S. Open Men’s Tennis Championship. Joining him, and others in his cabinet, was Yasir al-Rumayyan (top right), the chairman of LIV Golf and the governor of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund that backs it. Al-Rumayyan, who is to speak on Monday at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., had lobbied the president to help seal an alliance between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour; he has also pledged to invest more of the Saudi wealth fund’s assets in the U.S.
The Global View: Fraying alliances
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil convenes a virtual summit of his BRICS compatriots on Monday. On the agenda: President Trump’s trade war.
The summit follows the hosting by the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, of the leaders of India, Russia and more than a dozen other countries in Shanghai, where a mammoth military parade and warm words between one-time adversaries suggested a new front against the United States.
Overseas commentators warn that the disaffection with Trump’s tariffs could now ripple well beyond old U.S. adversaries in Beijing and Moscow; the BRICS alliance has grown to 10 countries.
Here’s what they’re saying:
Trump is pushing former enemies together. The administration’s tariffs of 50 percent on India and Brazil are fueling new anti-Western alliances, notes Jens Münchrath, an editor of Germany’s business paper Handelsblatt. “The fact that Trump is increasingly directing his erratic tariff fury at India and others makes it easy for Xi, Putin and Co. to win over” big nonaligned states, he wrote on Friday.
Modi’s embrace of Trump earlier this year now appeared in tatters, with the “quad” alliance — India, Australia, Japan, and the U.S. — “fraying,” warned the business editors of the Times of India. “India may still walk a middle path, but its sudden warmth towards Beijing and Moscow complicates U.S. strategy across the Indo-Pacific,” they wrote.
Even close U.S. allies are wondering if they can trust the U.S. The Korea Times wrote on Monday that the arrest of hundreds of Koreans working at the Hyundai-LG site in Georgia landed with a “thudding shock” in Seoul. “It is bitterly ironic,” the paper wrote, that under former President Joe Biden the site had been hailed as “a significant investment from an ally and foreign investor.”
Watch the dollar. The BRICS countries will be looking to create alternative partnerships that bypass the world’s biggest economy, India’s former trade negotiator Ajay Srivastava told the German Deutsche Welle network on Friday. Srivastava, who predicted that trade would increase in yuan, rupees and rubles, said the partnerships, “won’t dethrone the dollar, but will steadily chip away at its monopoly.” The BRICS countries’ central banks have also boosted gold reserves in order to lessen their dollar reliance.
THE SPEED READ
Deals
-
U.S. public pension funds cut their investments in private credit as investors worry about rising risks. (FT)
-
The chip-making equipment giant ASML will become the biggest backer of Mistral AI after investing $1.5 billion in the French start-up. (Reuters)
-
Some U.S. corporate giants, including Merck and Ford, are selling billions in debt as investors look to lock in higher returns before the Fed cuts interest rates again. (WSJ)
Technology and artificial intelligence
-
“The Spectacular Comeback Tour of a Crypto Convict” (NYT)
-
OpenAI told investors its cash burn through 2029 will reach $115 billion, $80 billion more than it previously expected. That won’t stop its Hollywood ambitions. (The Information, WSJ)
Best of the rest
-
Return-to-office mandates are helping businesses avoid layoffs by driving some workers to leave their jobs voluntarily. (Business Insider)
-
“Americans face biggest increase in health insurance costs in 15 years” (FT)
-
Girls had nearly closed the gender gap in STEM schooling — then Covid happened. (AP)
We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to [email protected].
Andrew Ross Sorkin is a columnist and the founder of DealBook, the flagship business and policy newsletter at The Times and an annual conference.
Bernhard Warner is a senior editor for DealBook, a newsletter from The Times, covering business trends, the economy and the markets.
Sarah Kessler is the weekend edition editor of the DealBook newsletter and writes features on business.
Michael J. de la Merced has covered global business and finance news for The Times since 2006.
Niko Gallogly is a Times business reporter, covering diversity and environmental and social justice efforts in corporate America. Email them at [email protected].
The post Ken Griffin Speaks Out Against Trump’s Attacks on the Fed appeared first on New York Times.
