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    In a Year of Working Dangerously, Fear of Trump Marks Public Service Awards

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    The Trump administration’s large cuts to the federal work force turned an annual celebration of federal workers into a reminder of loss.Every year in Washington, hundreds of federal workers put on gowns and tuxedos to honor colleagues who battle disease, pursue criminals and invent new technology, in what is billed as the Oscars of public service. Tearful honorees call co-workers and families onstage, and cabinet secretaries and the president offer thanks in person or by video.Things looked different this year.These are difficult times to be a nonpartisan federal expert, as the Trump administration has cast civil servants as villains and forced out a quarter-million of them. For the first time in the two-decade history of the Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals, the federal employee of the year — the biggest honor — was no longer a federal employee.David Lebryk, a former top Treasury Department official, was forced out of his career position for refusing to grant Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency what he considered unlawful access to the government’s payment system.In accepting his award on Tuesday night, Mr. Lebryk noted that “most of my career was spent trying to be unnoticed.” But he referred to the circumstances that led to his resignation, and offered a credo for public service.“It is important to exercise principled leadership, make difficult decisions, have the courage and conviction to stand behind those decisions and be accountable and ultimately prepared to accept the consequences of those decisions,” he said.There were no other acceptance speeches for awards given at the event — a departure from previous years — because some honorees said they were fearful of even inadvertently irking the administration. At least one winner turned down the award because the worker’s boss, a Trump appointee, forbade the worker to accept it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Stanley Fischer, Who Helped Defuse Financial Crises, Dies at 81

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      He was the No. 2 at the Federal Reserve and the I.M.F. during periods of economic turmoil, and he mentored future economic leaders, like Ben Bernanke.Stanley Fischer, an economist and central banker whose scholarship and genial, consensus-seeking style helped guide global economic policies and defuse financial crises for decades, died on Saturday at his home in Lexington, Mass. He was 81.The cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease, his son Michael said. Mr. Fischer served as the head of Israel’s central bank from 2005 to 2013, as vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board from 2014 to 2017 and as the No. 2 officer at the International Monetary Fund from 1994 to 2001, when that agency was struggling to contain financial panics in Mexico, Russia, Asia and Latin America.As a professor at M.I.T., he was a thesis adviser or mentor to an extraordinary range of future leaders, including Ben S. Bernanke, later chairman of the Fed; Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank; and Kazuo Ueda, governor of the Bank of Japan. His former students also included two people who chaired the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers, Christina D. Romer and N. Gregory Mankiw, as well as Lawrence H. Summers, who served as secretary of the Treasury and president of Harvard University.“He had a role in shaping a whole generation of economists and policymakers,” Mr. Bernanke said in a February 2024 interview for this obituary. That included spurring Mr. Bernanke’s initial interest in macroeconomics and monetary policy.In 1998, The Times described Mr. Fischer as “the closest thing the world economy has to a battlefield medic.” He helped negotiate a rescue package for Russia by cellphone while standing atop a sand dune on Martha’s Vineyard, where he was on vacation. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Russia’s War Machine Revs Up as the West’s Plan to Cap Oil Revenues Sputters

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      Russia has largely evaded attempts by the U.S. and Europe to keep it from profiting from its energy exports.The United States and its allies in the Group of 7 nations set two goals in 2022 when they enacted a novel plan to cap the price of Russian oil: restrict Moscow’s ability to profit from its energy exports while allowing its oil to continue flowing on international markets to prevent a global price shock.A year and a half later, only the latter goal appears to have worked. Energy prices have been relatively stable across the world, including in the United States, which helped devise the plan. But Russia’s war effort in Ukraine is intensifying, making it increasingly clear that efforts by Western allies to squeeze Moscow’s oil revenues are faltering.A variety of factors have allowed Russia to continue profiting from strong oil revenue, including lenient enforcement of the price cap. Russia’s development of an extensive “shadow” fleet of tankers has allowed it to largely circumvent that policy. That has allowed the Russian economy to be more resilient than expected, raising questions about the effectiveness of the coordinated sanctions campaign employed by the G7.The Biden administration maintains that the strategy has been effective and that the price cap has imposed costs on Russia and forced it to redirect money that it would have used in Ukraine to finance an alternative oil ecosystem.Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said in an interview on Sunday that the price of Russian oil was not the only measure of their profits, noting that Russia has had to invest significant resources in response to the cap.“We’ve made it very expensive for Russia to ship this oil to China and India in terms of acquiring a shadow fleet and providing insurance,” Ms. Yellen said on her flight to Europe, where she is holding meetings in Germany and attending a gathering of finance ministers in Italy. “We still think it’s working.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      I.M.F. Sees Steady Growth but Warns of Rising Protectionism

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      The International Monetary Fund offered an upbeat economic outlook but said that new trade barriers and escalating wars could worsen inflation.The global economy is approaching a soft landing after several years of geopolitical and economic turmoil, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday. But it warned that risks remain, including stubborn inflation, the threat of escalating global conflicts and rising protectionism.In its latest World Economic Outlook report, the I.M.F. projected global output to hold steady at 3.2 percent in 2024, unchanged from 2023. Although the pace of the expansion is tepid by historical standards, the I.M.F. said that global economic activity has been surprisingly resilient given that central banks aggressively raised interest rates to tame inflation and wars in Ukraine and the Middle East further disrupt supply chains.The forecasts came as policymakers from around the world began arriving in Washington for the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The outlook is brighter from just a year ago, when the I.M.F. was warning of underlying “turbulence” and a multitude of risks.Although the world economy has proved to be durable over the last year, defying predictions of a recession, there are lingering concerns that price pressures have not been sufficiently contained and that new trade barriers will be erected amid anxiety over a recent surge of cheap Chinese exports.“Somewhat worryingly, progress toward inflation targets has somewhat stalled since the beginning of the year,” Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, the I.M.F.’s chief economist, wrote in an essay that accompanied the report. “Oil prices have been rising recently in part due to geopolitical tensions and services inflation remains stubbornly high.”He added: “Further trade restrictions on Chinese exports could also push up goods inflation.”The gathering is taking place at a time of growing tension between the United States and China over a surge of Chinese green energy products, such as electric vehicles, lithium batteries and solar panels, that are flooding global markets. Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen returned last week from a trip to China, where she told her counterparts that Beijing’s industrial policy was harming American workers. She warned that the United States could pursue trade restrictions to protect investments in America’s solar and electric vehicle industries.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Yellen to Warn China Against Flood of Cheap Green Energy Exports

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      The Treasury secretary, who plans to make her second trip to China soon, will argue that the country’s excess industrial production warps supply chains.The Biden administration is growing increasingly concerned that a glut of heavily subsidized green technology exports from China is distorting global markets and plans to confront Chinese officials about the problem during an upcoming round of economic talks in Beijing.The tension over industrial policy is flaring as the United States invests heavily in production of solar technology and electric vehicle batteries with funding from the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, while China pumps money into its factory sector to help stimulate its sluggish economy. President Biden and Xi Jinping, China’s leader, have sought to stabilize the relationship between the world’s two largest economies, but differences over trade policy, investment restrictions and cyberespionage continue to strain ties.In a speech on Wednesday afternoon, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen will lay out her plans to raise the issue of overcapacity with her Chinese counterparts. At the Suniva solar cell factory in Norcross, Ga., she will warn that China’s export strategy threatens to destabilize global supply chains that are developing around industries such as solar, electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries, according to a copy of her prepared remarks reviewed by The New York Times.“China’s overcapacity distorts global prices and production patterns and hurts American firms and workers, as well as firms and workers around the world,” Ms. Yellen will say. “Challenges for individual firms can lead to concentrated supply chains, negatively impacting global economic resilience.”The Treasury secretary is expected to make her second trip to China in the coming weeks. The South China Morning Post reported that she will visit Guangzhou and Beijing in early April. The Treasury Department declined to comment on her travel plans.In her speech in Georgia, Ms. Yellen will compare China’s investments in green energy technology production to what she described as its previous overinvestment in steel and aluminum, saying it created “global spillovers.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Fed Chair Powell Signals a Retreat on Banking Rules

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      The Fed chair said regulators could scale back or rework a sweeping capital-requirements proposal that Wall Street has been fighting for months.Jay Powell, the Fed chair, stunned Wall Street yesterday with an apparent U-turn in bank regulation.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesJay Powell’s surprise For months, Wall Street C.E.O.s have been complaining bitterly and lobbying against the prospect of higher capital requirements, which would require them to keep more money on hand and would lower their profits. It appears they have scored a big win.Jay Powell dropped the bombshell in his testimony before the House on Wednesday. Markets were still digesting the Fed chair’s go-slow comments on interest rate cuts when he signaled that proposed new rules to force lenders to beef up their books would be scaled back, or reworked.“I do expect that there will be broad and material changes to the proposal,” he said.The capital rules, known as the “Basel III Endgame,” would apply to the largest banks. They would have to set aside a bigger emergency cushion to soak up losses stemming from shocks like the bank run last year that led to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and prompted a wider crisis.But the proposals have come under fire from bank chiefs, industry lobbyists, Republican lawmakers and even some liberal members of Congress, who fear that a mandate to set aside billions to fight the next potential crisis could feed another one.Critics fear that Basel III would crimp lending just as banks grapple with upheaval in commercial real estate. Lenders face a looming “maturity wall” of as much as $1.5 trillion in commercial real estate loans set to come over the next two years.That risk came into blaring focus during Powell’s testimony. The stock price of New York Community Bank, a Long Island-based lender with a mountain of souring real estate loans, plummeted on news it was seeking emergency funding. (More on that below.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Banks Face a Growing Real Estate Crisis

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      A year after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, investors are fearing for regional lenders saddled with a mountain of souring commercial mortgages.Concerns about New York Community Bancorp deepened on Wednesday after the lender was hit by a credit downgrade, and its stock fell further.Bing Guan/BloombergBanking crisis déjà vu? The sell-off in regional bank stocks looks set to worsen on Wednesday, after Moody’s cut New York Community Bancorp’s credit rating to junk status.Fears are now rising among investors over the United States’ distressed commercial real estate sector. This comes as a crucial lifeline created during last year’s banking crisis is set to expire.N.Y.C.B.’s shares plunged as much as 15 percent in premarket trading after the downgrade, before rebounding. The stock has plummeted roughly 60 percent in the past week after the lender reported dismal results, especially stemming from its exposure to souring commercial real estate loans.Last year, N.Y.C.B. won the bidding for assets tied to Signature Bank, which failed shortly after the demise of Silicon Valley Bank. That pushed its assets above $100 billion, putting it into a new regulatory category, and subjecting it to more stringent capital requirements.Bank jitters are spreading. The KBW Nasdaq Regional Banking Index, a collection of midsize bank stocks, has fallen nearly 12 percent in the past week as investors worry about lenders’ exposure to commercial real estate loan portfolios.Plunging office occupancy rates and high interest rates are a big reason. The shift in working practices after the height of the coronavirus pandemic has roiled the commercial real estate market and lenders could face a “maturity wall” of as much as $1.5 trillion in commercial real estate loans set to come this year and next. (U.S. regional banks provide the bulk of such loans, putting them at particular risk.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Yellen Says Stable Financial System Is Key to U.S. Economic Strength

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      The Treasury secretary will offer an upbeat assessment of the economy on Tuesday, a year after the nation’s banking system faced turmoil.Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen will tell lawmakers on Tuesday that the United States has had a “historic” economic recovery from the pandemic but that regulators must vigilantly safeguard the financial system from an array of looming risks to preserve the gains of the last three years.Ms. Yellen will deliver the comments in testimony to the House Financial Services Committee nearly a year after the Biden administration and federal regulators took aggressive steps to stabilize the nation’s banking system following the abrupt failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.While turmoil in the banking system has largely subsided, the Financial Stability Oversight Council, which is headed by Ms. Yellen, has been reviewing how it tracks and responds to risks to financial stability. Like other government bodies, the council did not anticipate or warn regulators about the problems that felled several regional banks.“Our continued economic strength depends on a solid and resilient U.S. financial system,” Ms. Yellen said in her prepared remarks.Last year’s bank collapses stemmed from a confluence of events, including a failure by banks to properly prepare for the rapid rise in interest rates. As interest rates rose, Silicon Valley Bank and others absorbed huge losses, creating a panic among depositors who scrambled to pull out their money. To prevent a more widespread run on the banking system, regulators took control of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank and invoked emergency measures to assure depositors that they would not lose their funds.The bank failures — and the government’s rescue — prompted debate over whether more needed to be done to ensure that customer deposits were protected and whether bank regulators were able to properly police risk.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      GOP Donors Face Dilemma as DeSantis Drops Out

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      Ron DeSantis’s exit, and Nikki Haley’s struggle to make headway against Donald Trump, are forcing Republicans to make a tough choice.The narrowing race for the Republican presidential nomination is creating tough choices for anti-Trump donors.Sophie Park for The New York TimesIt’s down to Trump and Haley now The effort to pick anyone but Donald Trump as the Republican presidential nominee took another big, if expected, blow on Sunday when Ron DeSantis dropped out of the race and endorsed the former president. (Other former hopefuls, including Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott, have also endorsed Trump.)The Republican faithful are coalescing around Trump in a way that raises questions about the next move by the wealthy donors who have sought to stop him.Nikki Haley is now the only potential roadblock to a Trump nomination. DeSantis came into the race as the most daunting opponent to the former president, but his misstep-laden campaign never turned into a serious threat. Among his strategic errors was betting that “anti-woke” fights, including his battle against Disney, would resonate with voters. (Politico reports that a top DeSantis fund-raiser had proposed a legally untested way for the campaign to remain afloat, but the Florida governor eventually yielded to electoral reality.)Haley has embraced her status as the last anti-Trump candidate standing: “May the best woman win,” she said on Sunday. But polls put her some 15 percentage points behind Trump in New Hampshire, as voters head to the polls tomorrow.It’s a sign that the influence of big-money donors is limited. DeSantis’s war chest was financed largely by deep-pocketed benefactors. And in recent months, Haley has drawn support from a bipartisan group of anti-Trump moguls, including the hedge fund billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller and the Democratic investor and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman. (JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon has publicly exhorted people of all political stripes to back Haley.)But as The Times’s Ken Vogel notes, winning over the moneyed class hasn’t guaranteed electoral success for years. Just ask Jeb Bush.What will those anti-Trump donors do? Some are continuing to back Haley: Several Wall Street titans, including Druckenmiller and Henry Kravis, will host a fund-raiser for her on Jan. 30, a week after the Republican and Democratic New Hampshire primaries. And Americans for Prosperity, a super PAC backed by the Koch business empire, said it would continue to back Haley through at least Super Tuesday in early March.But if Haley loses badly in New Hampshire, how long will business leaders accustomed to success stick with a failing bet? Ken Langone, a co-founder of Home Depot and one of her backers, said recently that he wants to see how she does tomorrow before giving more money.In other election news: The top outside political group backing President Biden raised $208 million last year. And Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is heading to the Midwest this week to tout Biden’s economic record as data points increasingly turn positive.HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING The war in Gaza hits the Middle East’s economy. Three months in, the conflict has cost Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan more than $10 billion in economic losses, and risks pushing 230,000 into poverty. Meanwhile, international support for Israel is fraying as casualties in Gaza mount and as attacks by Houthi rebels on commercial vessels in the Red Sea are driving up shipping costs.Exxon Mobil sues climate investors to stop a proxy fight. The fossil-fuel giant asked a federal court in Texas to throw out a proposal from Follow This and Arjuna Capital that calls for speeding up the company’s efforts to cut greenhouse gases. A decision could clarify S.E.C. guidance on which shareholder proposals can be put up for a vote by company shareholders.Another Boeing model comes under regulatory scrutiny. The F.A.A. said on Sunday that airlines should inspect the door plugs on Boeing 737-900ER planes “as an added layer of safety.” Confidence in Boeing’s engineering and quality control has fallen after hundreds of Boeing 737 Max 9s were grounded in the wake of a door panel tearing off an Alaska Airlines jet in flight.S&P 500 futures are up again on Monday. After hitting a record on Friday, the benchmark index looks set to extend those gains. Last week’s rally was driven by investor bets on interest rates cuts and the artificial intelligence boom buoying tech stocks.Could Macy’s get hostile? Macy’s has rejected a $5.8 billion takeover bid from the investment firms Arkhouse Management and Brigade Capital that valued the struggling department store chain at roughly 20 percent above its closing share price on Friday.The investor group is now threatening to take the offer to shareholders. With a potential hostile bid looming, here are DealBook’s questions about what may come next.How would Arkhouse and Brigade pull off a deal? Macy’s board cited doubts about the investment firms’ financing when it rejected the proposal on Sunday. The company said the firms had proposed to pay 25 percent of the offer in equity. The rest would most likely be from debt such as leveraged loans, the market for which has been tight thanks in part to high interest rates.Could the rejection open the door to other bids? Arkhouse’s 2021 offer for Columbia Property Trust led to another buyer entering the picture. Macy’s has not reached out to prospective buyers, people familiar with the matter tell DealBook. But the retailer indicated in a statement that it would “be open to opportunities that are in the best interests of the company and all of our shareholders.”The list of prospective suitors is short, given the challenges facing the retail sector and the scarring memories of buyouts-gone-bad like with Sears.What is Macy’s turnaround plan? The retailer’s shares have fallen about 30 percent over the past five years, as the company lost significant market share, forcing it to close stores and lay off staff — including an announcement last week that it would cut 2,350 jobs.All eyes are on Tony Spring, who takes over as C.E.O. next month after having led Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s much-healthier higher-end brand. But duplicating that kind of success could be challenging, given Macy’s large and underperforming store base and its different shopper demographics.Taking the temperature of tech C.E.O.s Tech sector C.E.O.s are more optimistic about the economy this year, especially the potential for artificial intelligence and the I.P.O. market. But they also remain wary that geopolitical tensions could disrupt trade and increase headwinds in the capital markets, SoftBank’s latest annual survey of its portfolio companies shows.DealBook got an exclusive first look at the report, which includes start-ups backed bySoftBank’s two Vision Funds and its Latin America fund.Hope is returning after a dismal two years. Almost half of the C.E.O.s surveyed were more upbeat about the economy than they were a year ago and expected to raise capital this year.The improvement in sentiment is from a low base, cautioned Alex Clavel, co-C.E.O. of SoftBank Investment Advisers, which manages the funds. Last year was a hangover from 2022, when the fund-raising “faucets were turned off,” he said. Hopes didn’t pan out that I.P.O.s at the end of 2023 — including of the SoftBank-backed Arm — would lead to a flow of new listings, but 37 percent of C.E.O.s said public listings would pick up in the second half of 2024.A.I. excitement is high, even if it’s unclear how it will be deployed. “There is an increasing sense that 2024 is the year when we go from A.I. enthusiasm to A.I. impact,” Clavel said. A third of the C.E.O.s said they had increased A.I. investment by 50 percent last year and were using it to make products more cheaply or to improve efficiency.But some are proceeding cautiously. Clavel said one company has used A.I. to cut costs significantly but is holding off on more changes “because it’s going to be too unsettling” for the work force.The C.E.O.s said tensions with China were the top geopolitical risk. Still, that obstacle hasn’t significantly affected their businesses yet. The biggest concern for 2024: that wider instability, including war in the Middle East, could sap investor interest in I.P.O.s or raise energy costs in Europe.“I have lost confidence in the determination and ability of the Harvard Corporation and Harvard leadership to maintain Harvard as a place where Jews and Israelis can flourish.” — Larry Summers, the former Treasury secretary and ex-president of Harvard, after the university announced a new antisemitism task force on Friday. The committee is set to be co-chaired by Derek Penslar, a professor of Jewish history who Summers said was “unsuited” for the role in part because of his position on the extent of the school’s antisemitism problem.The week ahead On the agenda this week: earnings, inflation and central bank decisions.Tomorrow: Netflix, Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson and Lockheed Martin release quarterly results. Also, the Bank of Japan is expected to maintain its ultra-loose monetary policy; the markets predict the country will exit its negative rates regime as soon as March.Elsewhere, the Academy Awards nominees are set to be announced.Wednesday: The Dutch chips-equipment manufacturer ASML, Tesla and AT&T report earnings.Thursday: It’s decision day for the European Central Bank, which is expected to hold steady on interest rates. On the other side of the Atlantic, U.S. fourth-quarter G.D.P. is set to be published.In earnings, LVMH, Intel, Visa and a slew of airlines including American, Southwest and Alaska Air Group are due to report.Friday: The Personal Consumption Expenditures report, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, will be released.THE SPEED READ DealsSony ended a $10 billion deal to combine its Indian assets with Zee Entertainment, a Mumbai-based media company. (Reuters)Macquarie, the big Australian investment firm, has raised 8 billion euros ($8.7 billion) for its latest European infrastructure fund. (FT)What Citigroup’s exit from the $4 trillion market for municipal bonds, a field it once dominated, means for the business of financing state and local governments. (WSJ)Artificial intelligenceEleven Labs, an A.I voice-cloning start-up, raised $80 million in new funds from investors led by Andreessen Horowitz at a valuation of more than $1 billion. (Bloomberg)How Japan is turning to avatars, robots and A.I. to tackle its labor crisis. (FT)Best of the rest“‘America is Under Attack’: Inside the Anti-D.E.I. Crusade” (NYT)American clothing makers are pushing to change a trade rule that effectively lets foreign manufacturers ship directly to U.S. consumers without paying tariffs. (NYT)The Chinese electric carmaker BYD is going upmarket with a Lamborghini-style E.V. to step up its fight with Tesla. (WSJ)We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com. More