White House Seizes on Fed Renovations as Opening to Oust Powell [WSJ]The administration formalized its latest challenge Thursday with a letter from Russell Vought, Trump’s budget director. In it, he implied Powell either made false statements to Congress about the $2.5 billion renovation of three office buildings overlooking the National Mall in Washington or failed to comply with permitting rules around capital-area construction…. The building allegations take on greater significance given Trump’s frequently expressed desire for lower rates and legal constraints on presidential power over the Fed. A recent Supreme Court order suggested Fed officials couldn’t be removed from their jobs over a policy dispute, meaning they would have to be removed “for cause,” which has generally been interpreted to mean malfeasance or dereliction of duty.
Economists See Lower Recession Risk and Stronger Job Growth: WSJ Survey [WSJ]Whether the improved mood lasts remains to be seen. This past week, Trump told numerous trading partners—including Brazil, Canada, Mexico and the European Union—that they would face much higher tariffs starting Aug. 1.
Jamie Dimon Says Private Credit Is Dangerous—and He Wants JPMorgan to Get In on It [WSJ]“Parts of direct lending are good,” Dimon said at the event in February, according to people who attended. “But not everyone does a great job, and that’s what causes problems with financial products.” He said that in the 2008 financial crisis, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers got in late, made bad choices and “bought these two shitty little mortgage companies,” leading eventually to “everything” blowing up…. The comparison was jarring. Just hours earlier, JPMorgan had announced it was investing $50 billion in private credit….
JPMorgan Tells Fintechs to Pay Up for Customer Data Access [Bloomberg via Yahoo!]The charges would drastically reshape the business for fintech firms, which fundamentally rely on their access to customers’ bank accounts. Payment platforms like PayPal Holdings Inc.’s Venmo, cryptocurrency wallets such as Coinbase Global Inc. and retail-trading brokerages like Robinhood Markets Inc. all use this data so customers can send, receive and trade money. Typically, the firms have been able to get it for free…. JPMorgan’s proposed fees in some cases would eclipse the revenue certain companies generate on a single transaction by as much as 1000%, one of the people familiar said.
Elon Musk Turns to Tesla and SpaceX to Fuel His AI Ambitions [Bloomberg]The billionaire on Sunday said he plans to hold a vote by Tesla Inc. shareholders on whether the EV maker should invest in xAI, the cash-burning artificial intelligence startup he founded two years ago. That comes shortly after SpaceX, his mammoth rocket-launch company, agreed to invest about $2 billion into the AI firm…. Musk said he didn’t support a merger of the companies but wanted Tesla investors to get exposure to the growth at xAI, which was valued at $113 billion after being folded into his social media platform, X….
Gov. Greg Abbott says emails with Elon Musk are too ‘intimate and embarrassing’ to make public [KUT News]Releasing them to the public, [Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s public information coordinator] wrote, “would have a chilling effect on the frank and open discussion necessary for the decision-making process.”
Taylor also argued that the communications are confidential under an exception to public records laws known as “common-law privacy” because they consist of “information that is intimate and embarrassing and not of legitimate concern to the public, including financial decisions that do not relate to transactions between an individual and a governmental body.”
