August 20, 2025

There’s some more commentary on the spectacle of free-enterprise, freedom-loving, double-entry-bookkeeping rugged American types kow-towing to Trump:

The orthodoxy manifested itself in familiar ways. Groups that claimed the mantle of individual liberties would decry new legislation. Talk radio and podcasts would mock unnamed bureaucrats for ham-fisted overreach. And powerful business lobbies were quick to denounce — in press releases and even lawsuits — regulations or taxes they saw as government overreach.

But when faced with President Donald Trump’s efforts to seize control of private enterprise — such as his recent arrangement to have the US pocket a portion of Nvidia’s sales to China, his social media outbursts at individual executives, his moves to take a stake in Intel, and his use of executive powers to cajole banks and law firms he perceives as insufficiently loyal — those same groups have gone quiet.

Take the US Chamber of Commerce, the largest business advocacy group in the country.

Last year, the Chamber sued a federal consumer watchdog group for attempting to cap credit card late fees at $8 a month, claiming the agency “exceeded its statutory authority.” In 2023, it sued the Biden administration over provisions for Medicare price negotiations in the Inflation Reduction Act, claiming the move would consolidate “unfettered and unchecked power” to the department of Health and Human Services.

But under Trump’s second term, the Chamber has had little to say publicly about Trump’s aggressive meddling in the private sector.

Similarly, the Business Roundtable, another DC-based lobbying group that represents hundreds of chief executives, has rarely been shy about denouncing what it sees as presidential overreach in the form of taxes and environmental regulations. This year, though, the group has been largely MIA on the MAGA shift toward a style of capitalism that more closely resembles the autocratic regimes of Russia and China.

Both groups have criticized Trump’s trade war, warning that tariffs hurt American businesses. But neither has spoken out about the president’s more direct assault on free enterprise.

Neither the Chamber of Commerce nor the Business Roundtable responded to multiple requests for comment.

And now Trump’s going after another Fed governor:

President Donald Trump on Wednesday called on a top policymaker at the Federal Reserve to resign, after one of his allies alleged that she committed mortgage fraud.

In a letter dated August 15, Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte urged the Justice Department to investigate a pair of mortgages taken out in recent years by Fed Governor Lisa Cook.

On Wednesday, Trump referenced those allegations on his social media platform, writing that “Cook must resign, now!!!”

But Cook pushed back on calls to resign, saying she would not be pushed out of the Fed.
…
In the letter, which Pulte posted on social media, he alleged that Cook, a Biden appointee, “falsified bank documents and property records to acquire more favorable loan terms, potentially committing mortgage fraud under the criminal statute.”

Pulte refers to a mortgage Cook took out in June 2021 to purchase a property in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which stipulated it would be her primary home address for at least a year, according to the letter. Cook then took out another mortgage in Georgia two weeks later, Pulte said, also declaring that property as her primary home address. Cook’s Georgia home was later listed as a rental, according to Pulte.

“There can be no mortgage fraud. This came across our desk, and it’s my duty to report it,” Pulte said. “It wouldn’t matter if she were a Republican or a Democrat. It is what it is.”

I’d like to know exactly what is meant by ‘this came across our desk’. How? I mean, these are banking documents; in what manner did they cross Pulte’s desk? Did they become public as a result of Cook’s governorship and were found by a dedicated Republican dirt patrol? Or was the process more … complex?

One way or another, stay tuned! This is getting dirty.

PerpetualDiscounts now yield 5.72%, equivalent to 7.44% interest at the standard conversion factor of 1.3x. Long corporates now yield 5.03%, so the pre-tax interest-equivalent spread (in this context, the “Seniority Spread”) is now 240bp, a sharp narrowing from the 255bp reported August 13.