WSJ What’s News - Trump’s Team Takes Aim at Bank Regulators

Episode Date: December 13, 2024

A.M. Edition for Dec. 13. The president-elect’s transition team explores ways to shrink, merge or even eliminate the top bank watchdogs in Washington. Plus, Trump advisers consider military action against Iran to stop its nuclear program. And the WSJ’s Jared Malsin is in Damascus, where the rebels who toppled the Assad regime are trying to chart the country’s future. Luke Vargas hosts.  Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Amazon Q Business is the generative AI assistant from AWS because business can be slow, like wading through mud. But Amazon Q helps streamline work so tasks like summarizing monthly results can be done in no time. Learn what Amazon Q Business can do for you at aws.com slash learn more. Trump advisors explore ways to shrink or eliminate bank watchdogs in DC. Plus Amazon's Jeff Bezos joins Mark Zuckerberg in seeking to mend ties with the president-elect. And we hear from correspondent Jared Malson in Damascus as rebel leaders try to chart

a new course for Syria after the fall of the Assad regime. One of their biggest goals at the moment is to gain international recognition. And the question is, will the country be destabilized by potentially some of the same actors that destabilized it in the first place? It's Friday, December 13th. I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal and here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. We begin with an exclusive report

as President-elect Trump's transition team has started to explore pathways to dramatically shrink, consolidate, or even eliminate the top bank watchdogs in Washington. According to people familiar with the matter, Trump's advisors and officials from his newly formed Department of Government Efficiency have been looking into whether the president-elect could abolish the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC, and whether deposit insurance could then be absorbed into the Treasury Department.

We asked Journal Finance Editor Alex Frangos to explain the significance of those potential changes. We as consumers trust the banks to hold our money. And part of that system of trust is having the deposit insurance program where up to $250,000 of savings in any account is protected and anything that rattles that system can have pretty big consequences. And we saw that with the banking crisis at Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Where these were banks that everyone thought were really solid and then all of a sudden depositors were like, oh, I don't trust this anymore and it caused a real panic and so any time you change these systems and structures it could have

consequences that are unforeseen and what they don't want is for It could have consequences that are unforeseen. What they don't want is for consumers to migrate all of their money just to the biggest banks, thinking that they're too big to fail and that can hamstring the smaller banks that are really important for small communities, for small businesses. So it's a very difficult and thorny thing to sort out. According to our reporting, Trump's team has also discussed combining or restructuring the FDIC, the Office of the Controller of the Currency, and the Federal Reserve.

Separately, Elon Musk, the co-chair of Trump's new Doge Department, has called for eliminating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, saying there are too many agencies with overlapping competences. Proposals to eliminate any agency would require congressional action, but in any case, significant job cuts are likely, with Trump expected to reinstate an executive order that would make some federal workers easier to dismiss. In a signal of potential foreign policy shifts in the new administration, Donald Trump is weighing options to stop Iran's

nuclear program that include the possibility of preventative airstrikes. We report that one option discussed by his transition team involves sending more US troops and military assets to the Middle East and potentially selling advanced weapons to Israel to strengthen its offensive capabilities. Another option would seek to use the threat of force, especially if paired with U.S. sanctions, to force Iran into diplomacy, a tactic that Trump tried to use with North Korea. Trump advisers worry economic pressure alone won't be enough to contain Tehran, given open debate among Iranian officials over whether to increase nuclear efforts and reconsider

a pledge not to procure weapons of mass destruction. in debate among Iranian officials over whether to increase nuclear efforts and reconsider a pledge not to procure weapons of mass destruction. Iran has enough highly enriched uranium to build four nuclear bombs and it would take just a few days for it to convert that into weapons-grade nuclear fuel. We are exclusively reporting that Amazon is planning a $1 million donation to Donald Trump's According to people familiar with the matter, the contribution is being prepared as founder Jeff Bezos prepares to visit Trump at Mar-a-Lago next week. Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post, has long feuded with Trump but has lately struck a more positive tone toward the President-elect.

In addition to Amazon's pursuit of business with the federal government, Bezos' space exploration company Blue Origin also competes for government contracts, including against Elon Musk's SpaceX. And in market news today, Chinese stocks fell after the country's annual Central Economic Work Conference yielded few details about future fiscal stimulus. Boeing shares are trending marginally higher off hours after the company committed a billion dollars to speed up production of its 787 Dreamliners in South Carolina.

The planemaker is trying to address a growing backlog caused by a range of problems including safety issues and lack of parts. And the UK has posted its second straight month of weakening economic activity. October's 0.1% contraction pours cold water on the new British government's hopes that growth can fund its spending plans and it could spur the Bank of England to consider cutting interest rates more quickly. Its next rate move is set for December 19th.

Coming up, correspondent Jared Malson joins us from Damascus as rebel fighters and ordinary Syrians alike reckon with the end of the Assad regime and chart a course for the future. That's after the break. Well, a historic week for Syria is drawing to a close after the stunning fall of dictator Bashar al-Assad as rebel groups and foreign powers vying to determine the country's future course. And here to put events into perspective, I'm joined from the Syrian capital Damascus by Journal correspondent Jared Malson. Jared, what is the mood like there in Damascus?

What are Syrians making of these immense changes to the country has just witnessed? Well, there are two main emotions. There's euphoria and there's grief. People are out in the streets celebrating, waving flags, meeting one another, going to different parts of the country that they couldn't access for the first time. And there's also grief because the end of the Assad regime means the opening up of this vast system of prisons into which thousands of people disappeared and many were executed by Assad's regime. Well, the work of trying to sort through that complex past and channel it into something

new is already underway. The rebel groups, Jared, that took control of the country in recent days, are there in Damascus now? Are they occupying former government buildings? Are they trying to take over the functions of a state? And do we know what their plans are? They're doing all of those things. This is the moment of transition. So a lot is very unclear. The new government has been putting their own police on the streets. They have said that they are demobilizing the regime's military. Their number one priority is establishing security. They don't want the country to fall into any kind of chaos. And that's been largely

successful, at least here in Damascus. How they will actually govern over the long term is very unclear. What I can tell you from being here is that most people are just very happy that the regime is gone and that they have freedom of speech again. This new government, they don't know whether to trust them yet. This is a rebel group that stormed in from Northern Syria that they weren't even really thinking about a few days ago. But what they've said is, you know, this is a victory for our revolution and they intend to hold the new government to account and complete what they see as a project of rebellion and revolution,

which includes personal and political freedom. Jared, this rebel group we've been talking about here, HTS, is classified by many foreign governments, including the US, as a terrorist organization over past links to al-Qaeda that they've now disavowed, that designation is going to be an impediment for them if it remains in place, right? One of their biggest goals at the moment is to gain international recognition. One thing they're doing now is reaching out to other countries to say, we are a mainstream group, we are not terrorists, and to really try to establish relations. How the Biden administration and more importantly, how the Trump administration handles that

is very unclear. And we have heard some statements from people in Trump's sphere taking potentially kind of a hard line in this area. And one thing countries could do is use the terrorist designation as leverage to push HTS to govern in a way that is more moderate. You mentioned earlier the language, our revolution, the emphasis there on our quite notable given that you and your colleagues have been reporting that there's this risk that post-Assad Syria could become a shooting range effectively for great powers.

We've seen over the past few days, Turkey intensifying its campaign against Kurdish militants, Israel stepping up a campaign against supply lines that have been used by Hezbollah and Iran. Many actors here with their own agendas, which could very well break from what the Syrians are hoping for their own future. That's right.

The main risk at the moment in terms of the security situation and in terms of Syria lurching into further turmoil is from those outside powers. It's been one of the main destabilizing factors in Syria this whole time. The massive bombing campaign by Russia and the military campaign by Iran that kept Assad in power. And now you still have a lot of these outside actors still involved and what they do will determine to some degree whether Syria is able to turn a path forward that's peaceful or not. I mean, have we seen rebel leaders trying to carve out a foreign policy at this point, weighing in on these actions that all these other powers have been taking within Syria's borders in the last few days?

Well, one really important thing is they are determined to drive out both Russia and Iran. They've taken over Iranian military bases. They have really defeated some of these Iranian backed militias and pushed them back. But another big question is the fate of the Russian military bases on the Mediterranean coast. Right. And one wonders if these actions that rebels have been taking that do overlap with American and or Israeli geopolitical interests that could, I guess, create an opening for Washington to try to help them out. And yet that is itself a potential credibility risk being seen as too aligned with foreign powers.

Right. It's extremely complicated and it puts Washington and the rebels themselves to some degree in a bind. But to me, really the important thing is what this means for Syria and Syrians. Again, for people in most of this country that were living in the part of the country that Assad still ruled were living under a police state who were afraid of saying anything, who were seeing their relatives disappearing in the night and just vanishing and going into these detention centers where many of them were executed.

This is a new day. And the question, as you said, is will the country be destabilized by potentially some of the same actors that destabilize it in the first place? I've been speaking with Wall Street Journal's Jared Malson in Damascus. Jared, thank you so much. Thank you. And that's it for What's News for Friday morning.

Today's show was produced by Kate Bulevant and Daniel Bach with supervising producer Christina Rocca. And I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show. Otherwise, have a great weekend and thanks for listening.