Finance

Amid economic uncertainty and a Bureau of Labor Statistics preliminary report revising down job numbers, CEOs weighed in this week on CNBC.
Ranging from JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon to PNC Financial Services CEO Bill Demchak, executives are starting to issue varying degrees of warning about slowdown.
“I think the economy is weakening,” Dimon told CNBC earlier this week.

Some of America’s top financial services executives are starting to issue warnings about the economy.
Saying they’re seeing signs of “softening” or “weakening,” a slew of CEOs have been weighing in ahead of next week’s Federal Reserve decision and with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics revising job numbers lower this week.

In a Wednesday CNBC interview, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said while the economy is “still chugging along,” the signals may be pointing in a different direction.
“There are number of CEOs that are talking about a softening in the economy – there’s no question,” he said. “We’ve seen some job data that indicates that there has been some softening.”
The BLS, in a preliminary report released Tuesday, revised its nonfarm payrolls data for the year prior to March 2025, showing a significant drop of 911,000 from the initial estimates. The revisions were more than 50% higher than last year’s and the biggest shift in more than 20 years, adding to growing concern over the economy.
The BLS has also come under fire from President Donald Trump, who fired the head of the bureau in early August and has criticized its data collection methods.

Solomon said he believes there’s “still more work to do” with today’s inflation and that tariffs are having an impact on growth, but that it’s difficult to quantify at this stage. As the economy heads into fall, Solomon said he expects a slight change in the policy rate, including a 25-basis point cut by the Fed next week.

Trump has also been critical of the central bank, calling for lower interest rates and bashing Fed Chair Jerome Powell. The Federal Open Market Committee last cut its benchmark interest rate in December 2024 and has held it steady since then in a target range of 4.25% to 4.5%. 
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon told CNBC on Tuesday that he believes the Fed will “probably” lower interest rates at its meeting next week, but that it may “not be consequential to the economy.
Dimon said he also believes the BLS report confirms that the U.S. economy is slowing down.
“I think the economy is weakening,” Dimon told CNBC’s Leslie Picker in an interview. “Whether it’s on the way to recession or just weakening, I don’t know.”
But ultimately, Dimon said the country will simply have to “wait and see” how the economy will progress given the weakening consumer.
Similarly, Wells Fargo CEO Charles Scharf told CNBC Wednesday that his bank is seeing lower-income Americans struggling to stay afloat, despite larger companies seemingly doing well.
“There is this big dichotomy between higher-income and lower-income consumers which continues and is a real issue,” Scharf said.
Commenting on the BLS numbers, Scharf said it’s “undeniable” that the discrepancy between American taxpayers exists and that he sees “more downside” to the U.S. economy.
Job creation in August also showed signs of weakness, as the BLS reported last week that nonfarm payrolls increased by just 22,000 for the month.
Morgan Stanley CEO Ted Pick told CNBC that he believes the American CEO or CFO has had to become resilient throughout the country’s recent ups and downs, including Covid and two Trump administrations.
“We’re in a place where I think some of the policy uncertainty is actually starting to get quantified,” he said.
Still, Pick said he’s seen the headwinds coming through and believes the policy uncertainty may be narrowing slightly.
“So, yes, there may be a little bit of a slowdown,” Pick said, adding that he’ll wait to see how it all plays out.
Barclays CEO C. S. Venkatakrishnan said on CNBC on Tuesday that he believes the Fed will cut on the margin, partly due to the softness in the labor market.
Traders are also expecting to see the Fed lower rates. They currently see a near certainty that the Fed will cut by at least a quarter point, according to the CME Fedwatch tool based on Fed futures trading, and some are betting that there will be an even deeper cut of 50 basis points, or a half percentage point.
Even if inflation problems haven’t tangibly presented themselves yet, Venkatakrishnan said the current economy is signaling that CEOs should have their eyes on the longer term.
“We haven’t seen them yet, but we’ve got to be worried about them,” he said.
PNC Financial Services CEO Bill Demchak also joined the wave, telling CNBC on Tuesday there’s “underlying pressures in our economy” between hiring workers, labor shortages, wage pressure and more.
Demchak said he’s seeing evidence to support the BLS’ revised report, and he believes that evidence is likely the reason that the Fed will cut rates going forward, even as consumer spending is “driving the economy.”
“There’s pressures inside of our economy that I don’t know disappear just because tariffs might get behind us at some point,” Demchak said. More

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THREE YEARS ago, calamity loomed. Russia’s war in Ukraine pitted two big grain exporters against each other. Breadbaskets elsewhere faced brutal droughts. Wheat prices hit records; maize and soyabeans also surged. Then, within weeks, they fell, and have carried on sliding since. They are now close to five-year lows. More

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Klarna opened at $52 after pricing its IPO above the company’s expected range.
The IPO marks the latest in a growing list of high-profile tech listings this year, including Circle and Figma.
Klarna competes in the buy now, pay later market with Affirm and Block’s Afterpay business.

Sebastian Siemiatkowski, chief executive officer and co-founder of Klarna Holding AB, center, and Michael Moritz, chairman of Klarna Bank AB, center right, during the company’s initial public offering (IPO) at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, US, on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Shares of Klarna rose 15% in their New York Stock Exchange debut Wednesday, closing at $45.82 after the Swedish fintech priced its IPO above its expected range.
Klarna, known for its popular buy now, pay later products, priced shares at $40 on Tuesday, raising $1.37 billion for the company and existing shareholders.

The IPO marks the latest in a growing list of high-profile tech listings this year, suggesting increased demand from Wall Street for new offerings. Companies like stablecoin issuer Circle and design software platform Figma soared in their respective debuts. Meanwhile, crypto exchange Gemini is expected to go public later this week.
“To me, it really just is a milestone,” Klarna’s co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski told CNBC in an interview on Wednesday. “It’s a little bit like a wedding. You prepare so much and you plan for it and it’s a big party. But in the end — marriage goes on.”
The stock opened at $52 before dropping as the day progressed. At the close, the company was valued at about $17.3 billion.
Klarna’s entry into the public markets will test Wall Street’s excitement about the direction of its business. The company has in recent months talked up its move into banking, rolling out a debit card and personal deposit accounts in the U.S.
Klarna has signed 700,000 card customers in the U.S. so far and has 5 million people on a waiting list seeking access to the product, Siemiatkowski told CNBC. He added that Klarna Card represents a different proposition to rival fintech Affirm’s card offering, which has attracted 2 million users since its launch in 2021.

“We’re attracting a slightly different audience maybe than the Affirm card,” Siemiatkowski said. “I get the impression that is more a card where people use it simply to be able to have financing with interest on slightly higher tickets.”
In addition to Affirm, Klarna also competes with Afterpay, which was acquired for $29 billion in 2021 by Square, now a unit of Block.
Klarna faces some potential regulatory headwinds. In the U.K., the government has proposed new rules to bring BNPL loans under formal oversight to address affordability concerns regarding the market.

A banner for Swedish fintech Klarna, hangs on the front of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) to celebrate the company’s IPO in New York City, U.S., September 10, 2025.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters

The IPO is poised to generate billions of dollars in returns for some of Klarna’s long-time investors. Existing shareholders are offering the bulk of Klarna shares — 28.8 million — on the public market. At its IPO price of $40, that translates to almost $1.2 billion. Meanwhile, Klarna raised $222 million from the IPO.
Sequoia, which first backed Klarna in 2010, has invested $500 million in total. The venture firm sold 2 million of its 79 million shares in the IPO, meaning it’s generated an overall return of about $2.65 billion, based on the offer price.
Andrew Reed, a partner at Sequoia, told CNBC that he was still in college when the firm made its first investment in an “alternative payments company in Stockholm.” The early work, he said, was around expanding in Europe.
“Being here in New York 15 years later with over 100 million consumers and over $100 billion of GMV [gross merchandise value] and close to a million merchants, it is staggering what one year after another of execution and growth and Sebastian’s long-term vision can do,” Reed said.
Another Klarna investor hasn’t been so lucky. Japan’s SoftBank led a 2021 funding round in Klarna at a $46 billion valuation and has since seen the value of its stake plunge significantly.
WATCH: CNBC’s interview with Klarna CEO Sebastian Siematkowski More

For the first time since Donald Trump returned to the White House, it seems that the Federal Reserve will do what he wants. “Jerome ‘too late’ Powell must now lower the rate,” wrote the president on August 12th after the latest release of consumer-price data, in his umpteenth variation on this theme. Ten days later Mr Powell, the Fed’s chair, hinted strongly to an annual gathering of central bankers at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, that an interest-rate cut was indeed coming. Now traders think one is a racing certainty when the monetary-policy committee next meets on September 16th and 17th. The only debate is whether the Fed’s rate, currently between 4.25% and 4.5%, will fall by 0.25 percentage points or 0.5. More

On the face of it, the European economy is in a grim situation. The IMF forecasts average growth of just 0.4% this year for the continent’s three largest economies—Germany, France and Italy—rising to barely 1% in 2026. On September 8th the French government fell owing to disputes about how to close the country’s outsize budget deficit, prompting its benchmark bond yields to rise to the level of Italy’s for the first time since the creation of the euro in 1999. President Donald Trump is levying tariffs, the war in Ukraine continues unabated and Chinese commercial competition is becoming only more fearsome. More

Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf said he supports the Federal Reserve’s independence and believes the central bank is still independent.
Scharf added that he believes President Donald Trump is entitled to be vocal about his thoughts on interest rates.
Trump has repeatedly attacked the Fed and called for it to lower its key benchmark rates this year.

Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf speaks during in interview with CNBC on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., June 4, 2025.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters

Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf said he “absolutely” supports the Federal Reserve’s independence, but that President Donald Trump is free to express his beliefs on how the central bank should set monetary policy.
The Fed has to be and currently is independent, Scharf said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Wednesday, where he referenced the fact that the central bank’s leaders serve distinct terms from elected politicians like the president. However, he added, there’s a difference between Trump opining on interest rates and the president impacting the Fed’s independence.

“I think the administration is entitled to be vocal about it, and I think the Fed should do what it believes it should do based upon the information that it sees,” Scharf said.
It’s not new for politicians to give their thoughts on the Fed’s rate decisions, Scharf said, but Trump “happens to be very vocal” about them.
Trump has repeatedly called for the central bank to lower interest rates and launched unprecedented attacks on Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whom he has given the nickname “Too Late” in reference to the Federal Open Market Committee not reducing its benchmark interest rate since December 2024.
The president also has attempted to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook in August after his housing finance chief, Bill Pulte, accused her of mortgage fraud. On Tuesday, a judge blocked Cook’s dismissal while a lawsuit challenging the move proceeds through the court system.
Markets widely expect the Fed to lower interest rates at its September meeting, as recent inflation data has come in lighter than expected and the labor market shows signs of trouble. CME FedWatch currently calculates a 90% chance the central bank will cut 25 basis points, and a 10% chance it’ll cut 50 basis points.
“‘Too Late’ must lower the RATE, BIG, right now. Powell is a total disaster, who doesn’t have a clue!!!” Trump posted on Truth Social on Wednesday morning.

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