Great VIDEO interview, From PYMNTS, a must watch!
So far, there have been 10 Mondays in the Trump administration, each possessing its own variety of manic behavior. “Manic Mondays,” we’ve been calling them. For example, there was the Monday when the CFPB looked like it was going to be deleted. Then there was the Monday where it wasn’t. Then there was the Monday following the nomination hearing for the CFPB director-designate Jonathan McKernan. He’s still the designate. No vote on his nomination has been scheduled.
But as PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster pointed out at the beginning of this week’s Washington Weekly conversation with QED Investor Amias Gerety, this Monday (April 7) just might be the most manic yet. A menu of stiff tariffs was introduced on Wednesday, April 2, and the stock market, along with most economist guidance for the balance of the year, went south almost immediately. In fact, on this most manic of Mondays, Gerety might have uttered a candidate for the greatest understatement of the year when he told Webster: “Not since the financial crisis have people needed to pay this close attention to the news. And I must tell you, figuring out tariffs is not a good extracurricular activity for CEOs.”
But it is the reality. As of this writing, the Dow was off 700 points, and the watercooler talk had turned to a 90-day tariff postponement, which the White House later said was “fake news.” For FinTech companies, especially those considering public offerings, the impact has been especially pronounced. Gerety, a former assistant treasury secretary in the Obama administration, noted that many FinTech firms poised to enter the IPO market have abruptly reversed course or put plans on indefinite hold. This shift marks a significant disruption for these companies, which view IPOs not just as milestones but as crucial events for raising capital and fueling aggressive expansion.
“IPOs are not the destination,” Gerety said, “but they are a massive capital formation moment. It empowers companies that go public, allowing them to be more aggressive, to acquire companies, hire more, and lower their cost of capital. All these benefits are going away.”
