Joe Biden will today begin fundraising for his re-election campaign as he hopes to top the $1bn raised for his 2020 run at the White House.
The two-day event in Washington will bring together Wall Street financiers and other deep-pocketed backers of the president who helped fund his successful campaign three years ago.
Several donors said the president’s top aides had begun making telephone calls as soon as Biden declared his intention to run on Tuesday.
Attendees at today’s event are expected to hear from Biden and the first lady while tomorrow’s session will be broken into smaller groups based on donors’ locations, people familiar with the plans said.
In 2020, which was the most costly presidential contest on record, Biden’s campaign raised $1.04bn. That compared with $774mn for the Donald Trump campaign, according to OpenSecrets, a campaign finance data site. But those figures exclude the funds raised by political action committees, which cannot co-ordinate directly with official campaigns but have few limits on fundraising and spending.
Bruce Heyman, a former US ambassador to Canada and ex-Goldman Sachs banker who helped boost turnout among voters abroad for the Democrats in 2020, suggested the Biden campaign would need to raise more money this time around.
The last election took place during the pandemic and therefore there was not as much “engagement in the field”, Heyman said. Democrats would also need to spend more to counter a Republican push to restrict voting rights, he said.
Here’s what else I’ll be watching today:
DeSantis touches down in London: Florida governor Ron DeSantis ends a four-country tour in London as he prepares to launch his presidential campaign.
US bank turmoil: The Federal Reserve will release its highly anticipated report into the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and, separately, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation reports on how it supervised Signature Bank.
Economic data: The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge — the core personal consumption expenditures price index — is updated.
Results: Oil majors Chevron and ExxonMobil release first-quarter earnings today. Consumer goods manufacturers Newell Brands and Colgate-Palmolive will also publish results.
Five more top stories
1. Amazon said growth slowed this month in its cloud computing division as customers cut back in response to challenging economic conditions. The comments took the gloss off results that beat expectations and its shares reversed gains in after-market trading.
Related: Share price gains yesterday for Big Tech companies, led by Meta, helped the S&P 500 to its biggest daily rise since January 6. Read the full US market report.
2. Germany’s economy stagnated in the first quarter, holding back growth in the eurozone. The lack of growth in Europe’s largest economy and higher than expected inflation in several eurozone countries will complicate next week’s interest rate decision by the European Central Bank. Read more on Europe’s latest growth figures.
3. Kazuo Ueda, the Bank of Japan’s new governor, has launched a comprehensive review of the central bank’s policy to combat decades of deflation. The BoJ kept interest rates at minus 0.1 per cent and said it would continue to allow 10-year bond yields to fluctuate by 0.5 percentage points above or below its target yield of zero at the end of Ueda’s first meeting as governor. Read more on the market reaction.
4. First Republic’s advisers, led by JPMorgan, are racing to finalise a private-sector solution to prevent the San Francisco lender being shut down by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. But the plan has not yet won the backing of White House officials.
5. A significant number of shareholders backed demands for climate change plans from Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and Bank of America at meetings this week against the wishes of the banks’ boards.
How well did you keep up with the news this week? Take our quiz.
The Big Read
India’s large, youthful population could accelerate economic growth if the country can harness its skills, giving it the chance to join China among the ranks of economic superpowers. In what some are predicting will be an “Indian century”, will the world’s most populous country seize its demographic dividend or squander it?
We’re also reading . . .
Inside Google’s DeepMind-Brain merger: The sudden popularity of ChatGPT shattered Google’s belief that it had a strong lead in the race to build and commercialise AI. It led to the reorganisation of “Google DeepMind”.
How to make MMFs safer: US money market funds have seen huge inflows amid the turmoil in the banking sector. Now is the time for reform, argues the FT’s editorial board.
Sudan conflict: The reckless disregard for life in Sudan is a betrayal of the “revolution” that led to the overthrow of the dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019, argues Africa Editor David Pilling.
Chart of the day
Russia’s stock market has climbed to its highest level in more than a year as domestic retail investors with nowhere else to go snap up dividend-paying stocks that sold off heavily following the invasion of Ukraine. Read more on the Moex’s surprisingly strong performance.
Take a break from the news
The new adventure game The Kraken Wakes is the latest beneficiary of games developer Charisma’s revolutionary AI dialogue software. Adapted from the 1953 John Wyndham novel of the same name, The Kraken Wakes gives a view into what happens when games start talking back.
Additional contributions by Tee Zhuo and Emily Goldberg
Source: Economy - ft.com
