Opening Bell: 4.25.25

Opening Bell: 4.25.25

Corporate Giants Shred Outlooks Over Tariff Uncertainty [WSJ]
“We don’t know what is going to happen,” Robert Isom, chief executive of American, told investors and analysts on Thursday. So the airline is being cautious. “What does that mean? It means that we don’t hire as much. It means that we don’t bring on as many planes, potentially. It means a reduction in overall economic activity….”
More executives, from Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon to Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, warned Wall Street and the Trump administration of the damage to the economy that tariffs will cause.

Americans sour on Trump’s handling of the economy, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds [Reuters]
Just 37% of respondents to the six-day poll that concluded on Monday approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, down from 42% in the hours after his January 20 inauguration, when he promised to supercharge the economy and bring about a “Golden Age of America.” The reading is well below than at any point in his first term, when it ranged from the mid-40’s to mid-50’s.
“You have a president who promised a golden age,” said James Pethokoukis, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. “But everything that’s supposed to be up is down, everything that’s supposed to be down is up.”

What Elon Musk Didn’t Budget For: Firing Workers Costs Money, Too [NYT]
The errors and obfuscations underlying DOGE’s claims of savings are well documented. Less known are the costs Mr. Musk incurred by taking what Mr. Trump called a “hatchet” to government and the resulting firings, agency lockouts and building seizures that mostly wound up in court…. The Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit organization that studies the federal work force, has used budget figures to produce a rough estimate that firings, re-hirings, lost productivity and paid leave of thousands of workers will cost upward of $135 billion this fiscal year….
Neither of these estimates includes the cost to taxpayers of defending DOGE’s moves in court.

US bank regulators pull back guardrails on bank crypto activities [Reuters via Yahoo!]
The Federal Reserve said it was withdrawing a pair of supervisory letters stipulating that banks should seek advance approval from regulators before engaging in crypto-asset and stablecoin activities.
In addition, the Fed joined the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in withdrawing a pair of 2023 statements urging banks to be vigilant around crypto-related risks.

The stock market will go down 80% ‘when this is over,’ says bearish investor Mark Spitznagel [MarketWatch via Morningstar]
One of Wall Street’s most notoriously pessimistic – and successful – investors, Mark Spitznagel, said the stock-market plunge that’s followed President Donald Trump’s tariff rollout isn’t the epic market crash he has been calling for, but rather the turmoil along the way to the big event…. “This is another selloff to shake people out. This isn’t Armageddon. That time will come as the bubble bursts,” he wrote. “This is a most contrarian view right now. Promise.”

Former Rep. George Santos set for sentencing in New York federal fraud case [CNBC]
Santos has asked Judge Joanna Seybert to sentence him to only the mandatory minimum of two years in prison. He argues that he accepted responsibility for his actions and cooperated with prosecutors.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York asked Seybert to sentence Santos to 87 months behind bars.
In a court filing last week, prosecutors told the judge that Santos’ recent series of defiant social media posts shows that “he remains unrepentant for his crimes.”

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