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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now, the longtime finance journalist William D. Cohan. You may know him from his deeply reported books like House of Cards after the 2008 financial crisis or more recently, Power Failure the Rise and Fall of an American Icon. About GE. Now he's got a column and newsletter for Puck News called Wall Street Braces for CEO Trump. He writes, "The latest shots fired against JP Morgan, Bank of America, and especially the zinger aimed at David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs, have sent a chill up many a spine in finance. When will Trump come for Wall Street as he has for universities and law firms?" That's all a quote from the article.

He also references Trump's takeover of the DC Police and the Kennedy Center. He could have added the portrayal of history at the Smithsonian after last week's news on that. Bill Cohan asks, among other things, "Is Trump turning into a socialist or just another strongman authoritarian?" On the comparison to socialists, he's comparing Trump's government takeover of business to socialist ones from elsewhere. The point being, it's still government control of the market. We'll get Bill Cohan's reporting and his take.

The David Solomon story is pretty remarkable, and you may not have heard it yet. We'll discuss Trump's nominee to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics, E.J. Antoni, from the Project 2025 producing Heritage Foundation, said after Trump was elected last year that he thinks the US should sunset, his word, the Social Security program. Sunset Social Security. We'll play a clip of Antonio where he says that and inadvertently suggests that one of Trump's core policies is making Social Security's financial problems worse. Bill, always good to have your insights. Welcome back to WNYC.

William D. Cohan: Thank you, Brian. Always a pleasure to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Would you start with Trump's shot at the head of Goldman Sachs, David Solomon? What did he say and why?

William D. Cohan: Last week, Trump did a double whammy. First, he went after JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, said that they were anti-conservative depositors, frankly, like himself. He was telegraphing his own experience where he says that he tried to deposit more than a billion dollars with both JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, and they turned him down because of their anti-conservative bias. Of course, both banks denied that. It might have more to do with the fact that when he was more of a businessman rather than a politician, six of his companies went into bankruptcy, and he stiffed much of Wall Street that had lent him money over the years.

With that backdrop, then he went after Goldman Sachs because its chief economists had the audacity to publish a report last week suggesting that the tariffs were beginning to affect consumer buying patterns where 22% was their precise number of-- Consumers were experiencing basically a 22% increase in their costs and that that would, over time, increase up to 67%. Not exactly sure where they get these numbers, but Donald decided after reading that or hearing about it, that the economists at the firm should be replaced.

Then he suggested that David Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, should go back to deejaying. Your audience may recall that, as a sidelight, David does a little DJing under the moniker DJ D Sol, which he actually hasn't done like techno pop DJing. He's come under criticism for that. I don't know why he can't do what he wants to do in his free time. He really hasn't done that since 2022. Of course, that's stuck in Trump's cross. He thinks that perhaps he'd be better off going back to deejaying rather than being CEO of Goldman Sachs.

By the way, since David became CEO of Goldman in October of 2018, almost seven years ago now, the stock is up exponentially. I think he had a rough patch where he tried to steer Goldman into some consumer-oriented business lines, but then got out of those, and the stock has literally taken off as he's focused again the firm back on investment banking.

Brian Lehrer: It's controversial enough that Trump is replacing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because he doesn't like the numbers that the Bureau produced on jobs. It's yet another level if he's telling private companies on Wall Street who they should fire. Did David Solomon fire this economist who Trump wanted fired?

William D. Cohan: Of course not, Brian, because at the moment there is still a separation, I believe, between government and private sector, although the lines have been blurring thanks to Trump. No, of course not. There's no reason he should fire his highly respected economists who work there. Everybody relies on much of what they have to say even more so, frankly, if Trump is going to take over the Bureau of Labor Statistics with his own plant so that he gets the numbers that he wants that will make the Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers not quite as reliable or as relevant as they once were, which is really, frankly, a terrible decision, but is just going to be the reality.

Which means that economists throughout Wall Street, and there are many, are going to rise in importance because of what they have to say about various aspects of the economy. Of course, David himself did not resign or go back to deejaying. It's just--

Brian Lehrer: You say, of course, he didn't fire the economist. Like, of course, he wouldn't fire the economist. With the influence that Trump has been leveling on the private sector, maybe the answer isn't so obvious. Previously, it seemed that he was focused with respect to the private sector mostly on getting them to cut DEI programs. You use words like socialist and authoritarian. What's the biggest picture here as you see it?

William D. Cohan: I think that in Trump two, so far, seven months in, is all about flexing his power into every crevice or as many crevices of American society as he can, especially as it relates to institutions and the elites. I noticed that he hasn't flexed his power on who should be the head of a coal company in West Virginia, but rather he's flexing his power about JPMorgan Chase, or Bank of America, or Goldman Sachs, or Disney, or CBS, or Meta, or Harvard, and Columbia. He's not flexing his power at the University of Alabama. Where he's got this wholesale red state support, he's not touching those institutions or making any noises whatsoever about any of those people.

It's all about-- By the way, I have a private theory that he and Stephen Miller, his very influential advisor, sit around every morning and figure out how can we get the goat of the liberals or the progressives every day. They've got this list that must be miles long. I really think they're just going down it every day, in part, to distract from his growing unpopularity or struggles with the economy, or heaven forbid, we get to the bottom of his involvement with Jeffrey Epstein.

What better way than to just come up with these truly outlandish events every day that distract the media? He's very, very good at distraction, as we know, and deflecting, and just are so outlandish that you can't help but scratch your head. I think that's what this is all about on a daily basis, to distract from things that he doesn't want the media and the public to focus on.

Brian Lehrer: He has been getting universities to cave. He's been getting law firms, in some cases, to cave. I'm talking about private institutions where he doesn't have executive control. When it comes to Wall Street, I think I see pretty high stock indexes. Is that relevant or irrelevant to what we've been discussing?

William D. Cohan: I think he has to be very, very careful about going after Wall Street. It's one thing to go after law firms. There are an awful lot of law firms. There aren't-- Post the 2008 financial crisis, Wall Street has become more like an oligarchy, an oligopoly, if you will, more like OPEC than-- because there just aren't that many firms that power the capital markets in the world. Most of them are in New York, and most of them are American, and they're one of our great accomplishments still.

There aren't very many of them anymore. If he goes after them and wounds the confidence that we have in those firms and in the capital markets at this very fragile moment, frankly, as you point out, with stock markets at all-time highs, and he's loving that, by the way. He champions that all the time, and he watches the stock market all the time. If confidence is wounded through his pot shots at these firms and we end up with a stock market correction, that's going to land right on his doorstep.

Brian Lehrer: If the economists are right, like the old head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Goldman Sachs economist, about how tariffs are starting to bite, if we're headed toward a stagflation, as some people interpret the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other numbers from the government to suggest, or if consumers are going to start paying such a high rate of increase in prices on a lot of things because of the tariffs and it's already started as Goldman Sachs indicated, why aren't we seeing a correction already if those numbers are right?

William D. Cohan: That's one of the mysteries of the stock market, frankly, Brian. We should be seeing, and we did on Liberation Day in April when it looked like he was going to go berserk on tariffs, as he's promised for years that he would and was now going to do that. The market fell close to 10%, and especially the bond market freaked out with interest rates rising 50 basis points in a couple of days. Investor confidence was quite shaken and nearly shattered in early April. Then, of course, as we know, he's backed off. He's 90 days here, 90 days there. Next thing you know, it's six months, it's a year.

It's really hard to tell what he's doing. Then, of course, the Financial Times coined that phrase, TACO, Trump Always Chickens Out. I think investors began to think, "Maybe he's just a ploy who knows what he's doing, and earnings have been good," but as the consumer begins to pay more at Walmart and at Target, where Chinese goods comprise a high percentage of what's sold there. The people who support, our Donald Trump supporters, end up having to pay more and more of their income for basic necessities. I think this is going to trickle down into the economy, and we are going to have a correction in the stock market.

We're definitely in a phase of, once again, this happens, of irrational exuberance, to coin a phrase from Alan Greenspan, the former Fed chairman. In the stock market, bond spreads are as tight as they've ever been, which is also very inexplicable. We're at a very precarious moment. I think, frankly, anything could shatter investor confidence. He's riding a wave at the moment, but it's very fragile.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, anyone who works on Wall Street or has worked on Wall Street or elsewhere in the finance sector have a comment or a question, or something to help us report this story? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. As we talk about William D. Cohan's article and newsletter entry for Puck News called Wall Street Braces for CEO Trump. We're going to get to E.J. Antoni from the Heritage Foundation being nominated to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Anyone related to Wall Street want to help us report this story in any way, as well as anyone else can call or text with a comment or question. 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692. Bill, do you know the nominee for Bureau of Labor Statistics, E.J. Antoni from the Heritage Foundation?

William D. Cohan: I've never met him, never spoken to him. I know what I've read, which of course is that he's got ties to the Heritage Foundation. He may even have contributed to the Project 2025 blueprint. If he's talking about sunsetting Social Security, that's going to be extremely unpopular, to put it mildly.

Brian Lehrer: Let me play that clip, and of course-

William D. Cohan: Please.

Brian Lehrer: -the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn't have the power to sunset Medicare or Social Security, we should say. Here's this clip from last December on KTRH radio in Houston.

E.J. Antoni: You work today, and that money goes immediately to pay today's retirees, today's beneficiaries. That's why I say it was set up like a Ponzi scheme. It was just like FTX or Bernie Madoff, where today's investors their funds are being used to pay yesterday's investors. Unless you are going to grow the number of investors at an exponential rate, that system is eventually going to collapse. Since we can't grow the workforce at an exponential rate, especially today when our population is actually in a state of decline, you're not going to be able to sustain a Ponzi scheme like Social Security. Eventually, you need to sunset the program.

Brian Lehrer: Eventually, you need to sunset the program. E.J. Antoni, now nominated by President Trump to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Do you want to say anything about the content of his analysis there and critique it or fact-check it in any way?

William D. Cohan: I'm not an expert on Social Security, other than having paid into it my whole professional career, and I'm at a stage where I'm beginning to be eligible to take out what I put in. That would be very disappointing on a personal level if it was "sunset". I mean comparing it to FTX, which was a criminal enterprise, or Bernie Madoff, which was a criminal enterprise, I think is ridiculous and hyperbole. I don't, frankly-- I know people are worried about the Social Security system and whether it's going to run out of money and all of that.

I don't really think-- We've got huge numbers of Americans still employed, unemployment rate is very low by historical standards. I think this is, frankly, just another scare tactic that the Trump world loves to use, whether it's Social Security or whether it's the Bureau of Labor Statistics, whether it's our mRNA vaccines, whether it's Jay Powell not cutting interest rates fast enough. It's all of a piece if you ask me, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, and he does say that he wouldn't cut you if you're close to Social Security age or other people who are already there off, but people in the future, if he had his way. I also want to draw attention to something that he said in that clip that suggests that one of Trump's core policies that we haven't mentioned yet is making Social Security's financial problems worse. He said, "We can't grow the workforce at an exponential rate, especially today when our population is actually in a state of decline." What's one of Trump's core policies? It's kicking out workers who have come to this country to work as immigrants, who we need.

If you do a financial analysis of how it relates to Social Security, the whole topic of immigration. Antoni in another comment even said that the good news in the decline in the jobs numbers last month was that all the jobs that were created went to native born Americans. He seems to suggest, and I haven't seen anybody else pick up on this, that we're working against the long-term solvency of Social Security without employing other fixes by kicking out a lot of people who want to be workers in the United States who, by the way, aren't committing crimes at a rate that's higher than anyone who was born here.

William D. Cohan: And who are doing a lot of the jobs that Americans don't care to do and are paying into the Social Security system. It could be that he's creating a self-fulfilling prophecy again. I don't know why he would even talk like this. Is now how are we going to believe the numbers coming out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics anymore? Because this guy has got obvious biases and is selected for those biases and his loyalty to Trump. Trump's going to get the numbers that he wants, whatever that means.

Brian Lehrer: Carl on Staten Island, you're on WNYC with Bill Cohan from Puck. Hi, Carl?

Carl: Good morning. Thank you for having me. I was vice president of trading for Credit Suisse up until 10 years ago, when I retired, which is no longer something to brag about. Donald Trump was a pathetic joke in the financial community and in the entire business community of New York. If you look at his enemies list, his enemies are the banks who refuse to lend him money, the brokers who refuse to deal with him, the NFL who refused to grant him a franchise, and on and on down the list. I don't understand how anybody with a brain could accept this person and could accept his policies. He's a joke.

Brian Lehrer: Carl, thank you very much. I think we have something similar from Joyce in Manhattan, who used to work at Citibank. Joyce, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Joyce: Yes, hello. Good morning to everybody. Yes, I will reiterate what Carl was saying. I was at Citibank, I was the vice president in the early '90s. The level of amount of loans that Trump defaulted on almost put the bank under. We were brought in to fix the situation because the bank was clearly very close to collapse. Part of that was due to Mr. Trump and his shenanigans. I had been at Morgan Bank and other financial institutions, and as Carl said, everybody in the real estate market and finance in New York knew you do not give a dime to Donald Trump.

The only ones that did were Deutsche Bank. That was done because of other political reasons that whole of the conversation. The point was he was known to be someone who defaulted on all his obligations. He went above and beyond. Unfortunately, some bankers had capitulated. When he would come up to visit our offices, a lot of us women were told to stay in our offices, close the door, so he wouldn't bother us. He was just known, as Carl said, as a pariah in the financial markets in New York. Don't blame any bank for never getting another dime.

Brian Lehrer: If Trump is right, though, in saying that banks were refusing to take a billion-dollar deposit from him, that's different than asking for a loan. Does that make sense to you?

Joyce: It does in the sense that you are obligated to understand who your clients are, know your clients. There's a very big push with financial institutions to be responsible to understanding who their clients are and where their capital is coming from. I absolutely understand that.

Brian Lehrer: Joyce, thank you for your call. Bill, before we run out of time, from what I've been reading, a lot of conservative economists, not just liberal and centrist economists, object to the nomination of Antoni because his scholarship on economics has been really bad, according to critics from the right as far as from the left. I don't know if you've been looking at this, but if that's the case, he has to get through the relevant committee in the Senate. There are some people on that committee on the Republican side who purport to be grown-ups, like Bill Cassidy and Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski. I think they would only need two Republican defections to defeat the nomination in committee, never mind on the full floor. Can you see it?

William D. Cohan: I think you used the word purport there, Brian. It's a good word. We've just seen over and over again that Trump gets his way with these Republican senators and congressmen, even though they claim to be open-minded and rational thinking because he puts the squeeze on them politically and puts the fear of being primaried into them. I don't know what gets these guys and women to go along with him on these cockamamie ideas that he's got, but he's been proven very effective at doing that.

I think it's important for listeners to understand that, again, this is one of those Trump tempests in a teapot that he's created a big issue, and we're talking about it. When the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics just delivers the envelope to Trump, to the president, everybody beneath him is very conscientious and serious about the work that they're doing to get these numbers correctly.

Brian Lehrer: As we discussed on a previous show, it takes the input of about 40 people in that department to come up with these monthly jobs numbers. Last question, what if they went to the system that I'm not sure if it's Trump or Antoni is suggesting, where instead of a monthly jobs report, they just have a quarterly report and release individual other aspects of data as they become available on some irregular basis? What effect do you think that would have on Wall Street or the broader economy nationally or locally, or globally?

William D. Cohan: It would make the BLS increasingly irrelevant because the markets are pretty much 24/7 these days. These kinds of statistics are very important to understand how the economy is doing, how the labor markets are doing, what the unemployment rate is. These are very important numbers. Yes, they have to be revised, and they've always been revised because they send out these surveys, and some people respond immediately, and some people take their time, and once they've got more information based on the latest survey, they update the numbers.

This latest thing that Trump got all bent out of shape on is actually a fairly minor adjustment to the overall numbers. If they lose their credibility because they it's all been politicized, then people are just going to turn to other sources like the Goldman Sachs economists, or the Morgan Stanley economists, or the Bank of England economists, or the European Union economists. It's just another institution that Trump is enjoying trashing.

Brian Lehrer: William D. Cohan, finance journalist these days for Puck News. Bill, thanks. We always appreciate when you're on.

William D. Cohan: Thank you, Brian. It's always a pleasure.

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