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This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus global business, finance and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Business Weekdaily Podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Well, not exactly what many were thinking about when it came to a second term for Donald Trump, and as our Max Ablson puts it, less than one hundred days into the new US administration, bankers from Wall Street to Shanghai's Poondong and the city of London are bracing for soured loans, canceled deals, forfeited fees, and perhaps threats to their own jobs. Credit markets are paralyzed, while mergers and initial stock offerings are being pulled amid fears of recession.
Out a big out not with people we're expecting. Max is, of course, Bloomberg News Finance reporter joining us here in studio.
I it's safe to say, if you think.
About the rally coming off of the election, right, everybody expected easier regulatory environment, pro business policies. I think all of the tech CEOs thought all of those cases from the government were not going to happen, and then yet here we are.
It's very different. It's very different. And let's go back to that moment. Actually, the post the post election giddiness from from the kind of billionaire class, from from the high echelons of the international finance industry, which is what
I focus on what I write about. I think there was everything you said is is so accurate, Carol, But then there was this other there was other, this other dynamic that was happening at the same time too, which was there was a kind of dismissal of the more chaotic side of Trump, the part that zigzags and goes left but then goes right and then goes left again.
And there was a thing that Trump was going to deliver the things that they wanted and would avoid the things that make them nauseous or that make them angry, or that would make the market tank out of out of a difference that they saw in Trump. They saw that Trump had a difference for the stock market, both both for the kind of Manhattan financial elite in particular, and then also for the more abstract stock market as a kind of benchmark, a report card. This this is
what they believed. I mean, this is what they told me and talked about publicly. I wrote a couple of stories for Business Week and Bloomberg Markets at the time that it is fair to say was really wrong and they were wrong based on what we're seeing now. The lovely sentence that you that you read aloud is from Leonard and Claudia and Arnold. I just think you really
I want to give them a credit. Listeners know that it was them who read it, not me, beautifully written, and the wrongness is has caught them unawares.
They really shocked, like when you talked to him, or they're like, oh my god, Carol.
They are surprised, but more than a surprise, they're annoyed. They're annoyed and they're angry and they did not see this coming.
Is it because they took him seriously but not literally the famous way that people were described to take the way that Trump spoke. Is it because of what he did during his first term pointing two the Dow in the s and P five hundred as a scorecard, or.
The fact that he was the president for four years and he did not put on gigantic tariffs on every country in the world, almost every country, I should say, but you know, taking someone serious or someone literal, they could have taken Trump at his word. But the thing about his leadership is he really does seem to change
his mind pretty quickly. In fact, there was that burst earlier today, like as in a few hours ago, where I think people, I think that there was a sense of relief in the market that he going to change his mind again. And you know, woe to the journalist or to the investor, or to the executive who thinks that he's that they know what he's going to do. I think that the one thing that I feel sure about when it comes to Donald Trump, and I really
don't feel sure about much. The one thing I feel sure about is that it's sort of impossible to prognosticate. It's impossible to predict. I really admire anyone who can sort of say with honesty that they've got him right and that they know what's going to happen, because I certainly don't. And these investors who thought that he was going to really koutout to the market, they certainly don't either.
Well, you know, what's interesting in Max and I think about this all the time, that we said so often going into the election that if he wins a second term, he's not going to have the guard rails right that he had during the first term. That were people from business CEOs. I guess from the more I don't want to say normal community, but people who would say, wait, you can't do that, mister president, or you need to
think about this. There are some people, though, Scott bessont right whose Treasury secretary, who understands the importance of markets that function well, understands the impact tariffs have, and yet not so sure that he's a guardrail.
Well, I think, how does that now?
Are the people you talk to do they say, well, wait a minute, we thought he might be a guardrail.
Well, your your excellent question brings to mind Anie Massa and Kathy Burton's absolutely terrific story this morning. That's the Bloomberg Big Take. That's a profile of Bill Ackman, who Bill Ackman is one of many members of you. You called it normal. I think a little bit tongue in cheek. I think you're really talking about the professional class and the executive class, the billionaires. That's why you're the reporter in the right. No no, no, no, no no, you can
do not wrong in my mind. But what their piece captures so well is the sense of my bad app which is a well that's a quote from from Acman. I mean, really, he really said that. He this is exactly what we're talking about. He predicted pro growth, probate, business, pro American. That was That was Acman celebrating Trump's victory, saying that this is going to be this incredible administration. And then and then what does he say on on X.
I don't think this was foreseeable. I assumed economic rationality would be paramount.
This was the sorry the president telegraph this. He said this that he would he said he loves tariffs.
Right, and in fact, he told our editor in chief that for an interview last year. But let's talk about that, because what he said was that he loved tariffs. He did not, however, talk about the depth, the extent, the volume, the hugeness, to use a Donald Trump word, of his tariffs. I'm thinking of the difference between the moment, speaking of markets, the moment when when the markets seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, when he when he used the number
ten ten percent tariffs. I'm talking about the big presentation just a few days ago. Feels like ancient history, right, the difference. What he did not telegraph. What he did not telegraph was the remember the giant signs, you know, country by country down to like small islands, island nations filled with penguins, filled with penguins. Shout out to penguins, a wonderful animal.
Love them.
But those are those were high numbers, Yeah, those are high numbers. What he did not telegraph was that that mathematical equation that my friend to colleague Matt Levine wrote about where they're basically they're doing something that was you know, I don't know, is unthinkable the right word? How about just simply unpredictable? Unpredictable?
I was going to ask you just got twenty seconds, there is there one word from the people that you talk to that kind of came to mind in trying to assess the situation. And I know we've used uncertainty a lot, but I just I was just curious.
I want to just quickly the words startled, surprise and ultimately very disappointed. Those are Tom Glosser's words, and Tom Glosser is the lead and independent board member at Morgan Stanley. So this is a guy who's a perfect symbol of that professional class, and he's talking about a group of people who are used to being inner circle, used to being relevant, working to preserve access, and they are startled.
It's Keller Stone Worry, both of them men, the one on Bill Ackman as well Maxabilsen, Bloomberg News Finance reporter, right here in our studio. I feel like those words are something you might use with a teenager startled.
Have you had experience just a little.
She's really great, though. This is Bloomberg.
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