Neil Freiman

22 consecutive quarter of headcount reductions.

And Bank of America actually had their stock go down this week because the CEO got up there and said, actually, guys, he told the analysts, you know, we actually have the same amount of employees as the quarter before.

I'm trying to get these employees down through attrition.

And analysts had some pretty tough questions about that.

But it's all about the year of efficiency for banks.

And, you know, their headcount has been cut by the most since 2016.

And each of these CEOs was asked about the elephant in the room, which is President Trump's proposal to cap credit card interest rates at 10%.

And to a T, they said, yeah, that would not be good for us because in 2024, the industry, the banking industry brought in $160 billion from interest fees.

That was up

50% from the $105 billion they made in 2022.

So this is a huge profit center for them.

And here's just a few quotables from these earnings calls.

Jeremy Barnum, who's JP Morgan's CFO said, it would obviously be bad for us.

Citigroup CFO said, in its straight cap is not something that we would or could support.

Frankly, it would restrict access to credit to those who need it most and would have a deleterious, good word,

impact on the economy.

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, if you bring the caps down, you're going to get restricted credit, meaning less people will get credit cards.

So to a T, these bank CEOs and executives are saying if we put the cap on, then fewer people are going to have access to credit.

And also at the same time, we're going to make a lot less money.

Final note, I think one of the most interesting that came out of these earnings calls was what Goldman Sachs' David Solomon said about prediction markets.