The uncertainty surrounding the chief-of-staff job reflects a record-setting turnover in the White House’s senior ranks. Whoever succeeds Mr. Kelly will be the third chief of staff in the president’s first two years.
Two of the candidates are Rep. Mark Meadows (R., N.C.), a Trump ally, and Mick Mulvaney, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.
Trump, E.U. announce deal to avert escalation of trade tensions
- The E.U. charges a 10 percent tariff on imports of U.S. automobiles, and the United States has a
- 2.5 percent tariff on European cars.
- The United States also charges a 25 percent tariff on light truck and SUV imports from other countries.
.. The disharmony within the White House is spilling into public view, something that appears to be bothering Trump. On Wednesday, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said at a CNBC event that he and National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow were at odds with others on how to proceed on trade but that Trump made the ultimate decisions on his own.
.. A tweet suggests Trump is irked by people questioning his approach.
“When you have people snipping at your heels during a negotiation, it will only take longer to make a deal, and the deal will never be as good as it could have been with unity,” he wrote Wednesday . “Negotiations are going really well, be cool. The end result will be worth it!”
Morgan Stanley, Goldman Got Help From Fed on Stress Tests
Federal Reserve officials told Goldman Sachs Group Inc. GS -0.72% and Morgan StanleyMS -0.56% that they were about to flunk a portion of the annual stress tests but offered them a deal to avoid an outright fail and continue paying billions to shareholders.
.. regulators told them that to fully pass the test, they would have to cut almost in half the combined $16 billion they had hoped to pay out to shareholders
.. Fed officials gave the banks an unprecedented option: If they agreed to freeze their payouts at recent levels, they would get a “conditional non-objection” grade and avoid the black eye of failure. That meant the banks could pay out a combined $13 billion, or about $5 billion more than what they would have given back to investors if they had decided to retake the test and get a passing grade.
It also will boost a profitability measure that helps determine how much Goldman Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein and Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman are paid.
.. The arrangement is the first of its kind in the eight years of the Fed’s annual tests, and one of the clearest signs to date of a significant shift in the regulatory environment for banks, which have been expecting a gentler approach from Washington ever since the election of President Donald Trump.
“New refs, new rules,” consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP wrote in a note.
This round of tests was the first graded by Trump appointee Randal Quarles, a former Wall Street lawyer and private-equity executive who last year became the Fed’s regulatory czar.
.. “This year’s stress test followed the same notification process as in past years—all firms were notified of the results and given the fixed option to reduce their capital payout plans with no negotiations,” a Fed spokesman said.
.. Fed officials said their leniency toward Goldman and Morgan Stanley was due in part to the impact of the 2017 tax law, which reduced the value of certain tax assets held by the banks and meant they entered the crisis scenario with diminished capital reserves
.. The stress tests, arguably the most visible sign of the postcrisis crackdown on Wall Street, are being changed in ways that benefit the industry. The Fed exempted three firms with less than $100 billion of assets from the test this year under the new banking law. Its treatment of Morgan Stanley and Goldman—as well as State Street Corp. , which got a pass although it also failed to clear capital requirements under the stress scenario—showed the Fed taking a more flexible approach to what had been a binary exercise.
“The Fed was very kind,” said Arthur Angulo, a managing director at Promontory Financial Group and a former Fed official. He added the Fed’s exercise of discretion on the quantitative portion of the test was “a potential slippery slope.”
.. The interim director at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Mick Mulvaney, has largely stopped initiating new investigations and wants the consumer-finance regulator to be less antagonistic to the businesses it regulates.
.. If Goldman had been required to rejigger its plan until its capital ratios exceeded the Fed’s minimum, the bank would have been able to seek just over $1 billion in buybacks, instead of the $5 billion that was approved
Mick Mulvaney fires all 25 members of consumer watchdog’s advisory board
Mick Mulvaney, acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, fired the agency’s 25-member advisory board Wednesday, days after some of its members criticized his leadership of the watchdog agency.
.. On Monday, 11 CAB members held a news conference and criticized Mulvaney for, among other things, canceling legally required meetings with the group.
On Wednesday, group members were notified that they were being replaced — and that they could not reapply for spots on the new board.
.. In a statement, the agency’s spokesman, John Czwartacki, took a final swipe at the group. “The outspoken members of the Consumer Advisory Board seem more concerned about protecting their taxpayer funded junkets to Washington, D.C., and being wined and dined by the Bureau than protecting consumers,” he said.
.. Revamping the board is part of the CFPB’s new approach to reaching out to stakeholders to “increase high quality feedback,” the bureau said in an email to the group. The CFPB will hold more town halls and roundtable discussions, the letter said, and the new CAB will have fewer members.
.. Since being appointed acting director by President Trump in November, Mulvaney has launched a top-to-bottom review of the bureau’s operations, stripped enforcement powers from a CFPB unit responsible for pursuing discrimination cases and proposed that lawmakers curb the agency’s powers.
.. Last week, Mulvaney sided with payday lenders who sued the CFPB to block implementation of new industry regulations.
.. “We’ve decided we’re going to start the advisory groups with new membership, to bring in these new perspectives and new dialogue,” said Anthony Welcher, the CFPB’s policy associate director for external affairs
.. During the call, Welcher said revamping the CAB would save the agency “multi-hundred-thousand dollars a year” by not having its periodic meetings in Washington. But several board members objected, noting that they would be willing to pay their own way to attend the meetings.
.. Their dismissal “is another move indicating Acting Director Mick Mulvaney is only interested in obtaining views from his inner circle, and has no interest in hearing the perspectives of those who work with struggling American families