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    Late-Night Negotiating Frenzy Left First Republic in JPMorgan’s Control

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    The resolution of First Republic Bank came after a frantic night of deal making by government officials and executives at the country’s biggest bank.Lawmakers and regulators have spent years erecting laws and rules meant to limit the power and size of the largest U.S. banks. But those efforts were cast aside in a frantic late-night effort by government officials to contain a banking crisis by seizing and selling First Republic Bank to the country’s biggest bank, JPMorgan Chase.At about 1 a.m. Monday, hours after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation had been expected to announce a buyer for the troubled regional lender, government officials informed JPMorgan executives that they had won the right to take over First Republic and the accounts of its well-heeled customers, most of them in wealthy coastal cities and suburbs.The F.D.I.C.’s decision appears, for now, to have quelled nearly two months of simmering turmoil in the banking sector that followed the sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in early March. “This part of the crisis is over,” Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s chief executive, told analysts on Monday in a conference call to discuss the acquisition.For Mr. Dimon, it was a reprise of his role in the 2008 financial crisis when JPMorgan acquired Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual at the behest of federal regulators.But the resolution of First Republic has also brought to the fore long-running debates about whether some banks have become too big too fail partly because regulators have allowed or even encouraged them to acquire smaller financial institutions, especially during crises.“Regulators view them as adults and business partners,” said Tyler Gellasch, president of Healthy Markets Association, a Washington-based group that advocates greater transparency in the financial system, referring to big banks like JPMorgan. “They are too big to fail and they are afforded the privilege of being so.”He added that JPMorgan was likely to make a lot of money from the acquisition. JPMorgan said on Monday that it expected the deal to raise its profits this year by $500 million.JPMorgan will pay the F.D.I.C. $10.6 billion to acquire First Republic. The government agency expects to cover a loss of about $13 billion on First Republic’s assets.`Normally a bank cannot acquire another bank if doing so would allow it to control more than 10 percent of the nation’s bank deposits — a threshold JPMorgan had already reached before buying First Republic. But the law includes an exception for the acquisition of a failing bank.The F.D.I.C. sounded out banks to see if they would be willing to take First Republic’s uninsured deposits and if their primary regulator would allow them to do so, according to two people familiar with the process. On Friday afternoon, the regulator invited the banks into a virtual data room to look at First Republic’s financials, the two people said. The government agency, which was working with the investment bank Guggenheim Securities, had plenty of time to prepare for the auction. First Republic had been struggling since the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, despite receiving a $30 billion lifeline in March from 11 of the country’s largest banks, an effort led by Mr. Dimon of JPMorgan.By the afternoon of April 24, it had became increasingly clear that First Republic couldn’t stand on its own. That day, the bank revealed in its quarterly earnings report that it had lost $102 billion in customer deposits in the last weeks of March, or more than half what it had at the end of December.Ahead of the earnings release, First Republic’s lawyers and other advisers told the bank’s senior executives not to answer any questions on the company’s conference call, according to a person briefed on the matter, because of the bank’s dire situation.The revelations in the report and the executives’ silence spooked investors, who dumped its already beaten-down stock.When the F.D.I.C. began the process to sell First Republic, several bidders including PNC Financial Services, Fifth Third Bancorp, Citizens Financial Group and JPMorgan expressed an interest. Analysts and executives at those banks began going through First Republic’s data to figure out how much they would be willing to bid and submitted bids by early afternoon Sunday.Regulators and Guggenheim then returned to the four bidders, asking them for their best and final offers by 7 p.m. E.T. Each bank, including JPMorgan Chase, improved its offer, two of the people said.Regulators had indicated that they planned to announce a winner by 8 p.m., before markets in Asia opened. PNC executives had spent much of the weekend at the bank’s Pittsburgh headquarters putting together its bid. Executives at Citizens, which is based in Providence, R.I., gathered in offices in Connecticut and Massachusetts. But 8 p.m. rolled by with no word from the F.D.I.C. Several hours of silence followed.For the three smaller banks, the deal would have been transformative, giving them a much bigger presence in wealthy places like the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City. PNC, which is the sixth-largest U.S. bank, would have bolstered its position to challenge the nation’s four large commercial lenders — JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo.Ultimately, JPMorgan not only offered more money than others and agreed to buy the vast majority of the bank, two people familiar with the process said. Regulators also were more inclined to accept the bank’s offer because JPMorgan was likely to have an easier time integrating First Republic’s branches into its business and managing the smaller bank’s loans and mortgages either by holding onto them or selling them, the two people said.As the executives at the smaller banks waited for their phones to ring, the F.D.I.C. and its advisers continued to negotiate with Mr. Dimon and his team, who were seeking assurances that the government would safeguard JPMorgan against losses, according to one of the people.At around 3 a.m., the F.D.I.C. announced that JPMorgan would acquire First Republic.An F.D.I.C. spokesman declined to comment on other bidders. In its statement, the agency said, “The resolution of First Republic Bank involved a highly competitive bidding process and resulted in a transaction consistent with the least-cost requirements of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act.” The announcement was widely praised in the financial industry. Robin Vince, the president and chief executive of Bank of New York Mellon, said in an interview that it felt “like a cloud has been lifted.”Some financial analysts cautioned that the celebrations might be overdone.Many banks still have hundreds of billions of dollars in unrealized losses on Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities purchased when interest rates were very low. Some of those bond investments are now worth much less because the Federal Reserve has sharply raised rates to bring down inflation.Christopher Whalen of Whalen Global Advisors said the Fed fueled some of the problems at banks like First Republic with an easy money policy that led them to load up on bonds that are now performing poorly. “This problem will not go away until the Fed drops interest rates,” he said. “Otherwise, we’ll see more banks fail.”But Mr. Whalen’s view is a minority opinion. The growing consensus is that the failures of Silicon Valley, Signature and now First Republic will not lead to a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis that brought down Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual.The assets of the three banks that failed this year are greater than of the 25 banks that failed in 2008 after adjusting for inflation. But 465 banks failed in total from 2008 to 2012.One unresolved issue is how to deal with banks that still have a high percentage of uninsured deposits — money from customers well in excess of the $250,000 federally insured cap on deposits. The F.D.I.C. on Monday recommended that Congress consider expanding its ability to protect deposits.Many investors and depositors are already assuming that the government will step in to protect all deposits at any failing institution by invoking a systemic risk exception — something they did with Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. But that’s easy to do when it is just a few banks that run into trouble and more difficult if many banks have problems.Another looming concern is that midsize banks will pull back on lending to preserve capital if they are subject to the kind of bank runs that took place at Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic. Depositors might also move their savings to money market funds, which tend to offer higher returns than savings or checking accounts.Midsize banks also need to brace for more exacting oversight from the Fed and the F.D.I.C., which criticized themselves in reports released last week about the bank failures in March.Regional and community banks are the main source of financing for the commercial real estate industry, which encompasses office buildings, apartment complexes and shopping centers. An unwillingness by banks to lend to developers could stymie plans for new construction.Any pullback in lending could lead to a slowdown in economic growth or a recession.Some experts said that despite those challenges and concerns about big banks getting bigger, regulators have done an admirable job in restoring stability to the financial system.“It was an extremely difficult situation, and given how difficult it was, I think it was well done,” said Sheila Bair, who was chair of the F.D.I.C. during the 2008 financial crisis. “It means that big banks becoming bigger when smaller banks begin to fail is inevitable,” she added.Reporting was contributed by More

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    Housing Market Gridlock: Buyers Are Eager, but Sellers Are Scarce

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    Homeowners with low-rate mortgages are delaying the decision to sell until market conditions change.The housing market typically comes to life in spring, when buyers emerge in the warmer weather. This year, the market appears stuck in a deep freeze, and the biggest culprit is a lack of sellers, housing experts say.There is interest among buyers — mortgage applications were up 10 percent in March from the month before — but the number of homes for sale is low. The mismatch is caused in part by homeowners who are inclined to sell but are sitting on the sidelines, scared off by the steep prices and mortgage rates that they would face as buyers.More than three-quarters of sellers in a recent survey by Realtor.com said they felt “locked in” to their home by their own low mortgage rate, according to a recent survey by Realtor.com. More than half said they planned to wait until rates fell before putting their homes on the market.Sandy Robinson, a 71-year-old retired teacher in Fairhaven, Mass., is daunted by the market. She would like to sell her two-bedroom townhouse but is worried about being able to afford a new home. “It’s a little scary now, and you have to be careful,” she said.A stalemate has mired the housing market, when it should be more robust. Sales of existing homes in March were down 22 percent from the year before, according to the National Association of Realtors. The inventory of unsold homes on the market at the end of March totaled 2.6 months’ supply, meaning it would take that long to sell them. Inventory is typically twice that amount to balance supply and demand.“We are in a real gridlock situation,” said Robert Frick, corporate economist at the Navy Federal Credit Union. “It’s going to be a tortuous process to unfreeze the market and take a long time to get back to a normal supply-and-demand situation.”Fewer homes for sale mean more competition among buyers, which leads to bidding wars and drives up prices. Although down from recent highs, the average price of a house remains about 40 percent higher than at the beginning of 2020, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller index, which measures prices across the nation.“Everybody is a little surprised at the level of price resilience,” said Todd Teta, chief product and technology officer for Attom Data Solutions, a real estate analytics firm.Ellen Goldman and Sam Savage are looking to downsize from the Florida home they have lived in since 2004 but are in no rush to sell.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesMatt Berger would like to sell his three-bedroom starter home in Lebanon, Ohio, where he lives with his wife and two young children, but is holding back. “It feels tight now, and will only get tighter as the kids grow,” he said.They are looking to move closer to Cincinnati, but homes they could afford a year ago are now out of their price range. Adding to the pressure is the low mortgage rate on their current home: “We are in the mid-threes” — roughly half the national average — “and I’d hate to have to say goodbye to that,” said Mr. Berger, 42.“It’s a doubly whammy of the higher interest rates and the home values being so high, and that is scaring us off,” he added. He and his wife are hoping that mortgage rates will fall and they find a cheaper home in a year or two, before their children are settled in school.The average rate on the most popular home loan, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, is 6.43 percent, Freddie Mac reported on Thursday, more than twice what it was two years ago. Mortgage rates peaked above 7 percent late last year, but the decline since then has been slow and uneven.To get sellers more motivated again, rates will have to fall to the “magic mortgage rate” of 5.5 percent, according to a survey by John Burns Research and Consulting. More than 70 percent of prospective home buyers told the researchers that they were not willing to accept a mortgage above that rate.“Homeowners seem to be pretty patient right now,” said Maegan Sherlock, a senior research analyst at John Burns. “Until things get a little better, those people are going to hold out,” she added.Most industry experts believe the tipping point is still a ways off. “This is going to be a transition year,” said Danielle Hale, the chief economist of Realtor.com. “As we move into 2024, we should see more people with an appetite to buy.”The market also may thaw as demand from frustrated buyers is met by home builders, which “historically created first-time home opportunities and move-up opportunities,” said Mr. Teta of Attom.A lack of inventory of existing homes appears to be pushing buyers to newly built homes, a smaller market where sales have held up better. Sales of new single-family homes jumped nearly 10 percent in March from the month before, according to the Census Bureau.The National Association of Realtors forecasts that sales of new homes will increase 4.5 percent this year and 12 percent in 2024. It expects existing-home sales to drop about 9 percent this year and then bounce back in 2024.And there are always reasons that reluctant homeowners could be compelled to sell, like job relocations, downsizing or divorce, said Iliana Abella, executive director of sales at the Abella Group, a real estate brokerage in Miami.“If you are planning to stay in your home for longer than five years, 6 percent is not going to kill you,” she said of current interest rates.Still, many homeowners are content to wait.Ellen Goldman, a 72-year-old retired lawyer in Naples, Fla., is looking to downsize. She and her husband, Sam Savage, have lived in their two-story home since 2004, but realize that the stairs will get more difficult as they age.“We both work out, and it’s not an issue,” Ms. Goldman said, adding that “we want to make the move now before it becomes too hard.”But they are in no rush. “We don’t have to do this,” she said, as they keep an eye on local prices. “We would be fine staying, too.” More

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    Inflation Cooled in March, but Stubborn Price Increases Remain

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    The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, the Personal Consumption Expenditures index, slowed in March. But signs point to staying power.Inflation is slowing, a fresh reading of the Federal Reserve’s preferred index showed, but costs continue to climb rapidly after stripping out volatile food and fuel — which shows that price pressures retain staying power and it could be a long road back to normal.The Personal Consumption Expenditures index climbed by 4.2 percent in the year through March, down notably from 5.1 percent in the year through February.But after stripping out food and fuel prices, a closely watched “core” index held nearly steady last month. That measure rose by 4.6 percent over the year, compared with 4.7 percent in the previous reading — a figure that was revised up slightly.The data provide further evidence that inflation is moderating, but that the process remains bumpy and could take a long time to fully play out. Fed officials have raised interest rates sharply over the past year to make money more expensive to borrow and slow demand, and those moves are only slowly trickling through the economy and weighing down price increases.The central bank meets on May 3 to make its next policy decision, and officials are widely expected to raise rates by a quarter percentage point to just above 5 percent. Markets will be just as focused on what they signal for the future: Central bankers forecast in March that they might stop lifting interest rates after their next adjustment. Both incoming price and wage data and financial news could inform whether they feel comfortable hitting pause.The Fed will also need to weigh turmoil in the banking sector as it considers its next move. A series of prominent bank failures in March sent tremors through the system, and those persist. First Republic has continued to struggle, and its stock plummeted this week. Problems in the industry can slow lending to consumers and businesses, weighing on the economy.With growth slowing and the bank issues further weighing consumers down, companies may find in the coming months that they are less able to charge more for their goods and services without scaring away customers. So far, though, many have retained an ability to raise prices.“If we see inflation that warrants us needing to take additional pricing, we’ll take it,” Brian Niccol, chief executive at the burrito chain Chipotle, said during an earnings call this week. “I think we’ve now demonstrated we do have pricing power.” More

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    Stress Builds as Office Building Owners and Lenders Haggle Over Debt

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    A real estate investment fund recently defaulted on $750 million of mortgages for two Los Angeles skyscrapers. A private equity firm slashed the value of its investment in the Willis Tower in Chicago by nearly a third. And a big New York landlord is trying to extend the deadline for paying down a loan for a Park Avenue office tower.Office districts in nearly every U.S. city have been under great stress since the pandemic emptied workplaces and made working from home common. But in recent months, the crisis has entered a tense phase that could damage local economies and cause financial hits to real estate investors and scores of banks.Lenders are increasingly reluctant to make new loans to owners of office buildings, especially after the collapse of two banks last month.“They don’t want to make new office building loans because they don’t want more exposure,” said Scott Rechler, a New York landlord who is a big player in the city’s office market and sits on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.The timing of the pullback in lending couldn’t be worse. Landlords need to refinance about $137 billion of office mortgages this year and nearly half a trillion dollars in the following four years, according to Trepp, a commercial real estate data firm. The Federal Reserve’s campaign to fight inflation by raising interest rates has also substantially raised the cost of loans still on offer.Banks’ unwillingness to lend and building owners’ desperation for credit have created a standoff. Lenders want to extend loans and make new ones only if they can get better terms. Many landlords are pushing back, and some are threatening to default, effectively betting that banks and investors stand to lose more in a foreclosure. Blackstone slashed the value of the Willis Tower in Chicago by 29 percent. Lyndon French for The New York TimesThe Willis Tower, formerly the Sears Tower, is the third tallest in the country.Lyndon French for The New York TimesHow private negotiations between lenders and building owners are resolved could have major ramifications. Defaults could heap pressure on regional banks and help push the economy into recession. Local property tax revenue, already under pressure, could plummet, forcing governments to cut services or lay off workers.“What we are seeing is this dance between lenders and owners,” said Joshua Zegen of Madison Realty Capital in New York, a firm that specializes in financing for commercial real estate projects. “No one knows what the right value is. No one wants to take a building back,” he said, adding that building owners don’t want to put in new capital, either.He added that the office sector was feeling far more stress than other kinds of commercial real estate like hotels and apartment buildings.Some industry experts are optimistic that given enough time, building owners and their lenders will hammer out compromises, avoiding foreclosures or a big loss in property tax revenue because everybody wants to minimize losses.“I don’t see it as something that is going to result in systematic risk,” said Manus Clancy, a senior managing director at Trepp. “It’s not going to bring down banks, but you could see some banks that have problems. Nothing gets resolved quickly in this market.”Loans on commercial buildings are typically easier than home mortgages to extend or modify. Negotiations are handled by bank executives or specialized finance firms called servicers, which act on behalf of investors that own securities backed by one or more commercial mortgages.But striking a deal can still be hard.Mr. Rechler’s company, RXR, recently stopped making payments on a loan it used to finance the purchase of 61 Broadway in downtown Manhattan. His company got its original investment in the building back after selling nearly half its stake to another investor several years ago, he said. He added that the lender, Aareal Bank, a German institution, was considering selling the loan and the building.“In this illiquid market, can they sell that loan? Can they sell the building?” Mr. Rechler said. Aareal Bank declined to comment.Blackstone bought Willis Tower for about $1.3 billion in 2015.Lyndon French for The New York TimesAnd it committed to spending $500 million on renovating the 50-year-old building.Lyndon French for The New York TimesEric Gural is a co-chief executive of GFP Real Estate, a family-owned firm that has stakes in several Manhattan office buildings, mostly older ones. He has been embroiled in nearly seven months of negotiations with a bank to extend a $30 million loan on a building in Union Square, and just two months are left on the mortgage.“I’m trying to get a one-year extension on an existing loan so I can see what interest rates look like next year, which is likely to be better than they are now,” Mr. Gural said. “Hybrid work has created fear in the banks.”Though many workers have returned to offices at least a few days a week, 18.6 percent of U.S. office space is available for rent, according to Cushman & Wakefield, a commercial real estate services firm, the most since it started measuring vacancies in 1995.Public pension funds, insurance companies and mutual fund firms that invest in bonds backed by commercial mortgages also have an interest in seeing problems resolved or put off. A wave of foreclosures would lower the value of their securities.Many of the mortgages that analysts are most worried about involve buildings in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Washington — cities where there is a glut of vacant space or where workers are reluctant to return to offices.One such property is the 108-story Willis Tower in Chicago — the third-tallest building in the country, after One World Trade Center and Central Park Tower, both in Manhattan. The giant private equity firm Blackstone bought it for about $1.3 billion in 2015 and committed to spending $500 million on renovating the 50-year-old building, formerly the Sears Tower, including adding retail space and a rooftop terrace.But in December, United Airlines, the building’s largest tenant, paid an early termination fee and vacated three floors; the company still occupies 16 floors. That month, about 83 percent of the building was occupied, according to KBRA Analytics, a credit data and research firm. Blackstone disputes those numbers; Jeffrey Kauth, a company spokesman, said that “approximately 90 percent of the office space is leased.”Blackstone recently notified some of its real estate fund investors that it had written down the value of its equity investment in Willis Tower by $119 million, or 29 percent, said a person briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive financial information. In March, Blackstone got a fourth extension on the $1.33 billion mortgage, pushing the due date to next year, according to Trepp. Under the terms of the loan, the firm can seek another one-year extension next year.The loan on the Gas Company Tower in downtown Los Angeles is in default.Tag Christof for The New York TimesA loan default sets up 777 Tower for potential foreclosure or sale.Tag Christof for The New York TimesBlackstone said only around 2 percent of the firm’s real estate funds were invested in office buildings — down a lot from a decade ago.Even streets with some of the priciest real estate in the country are not immune.In Manhattan, the owner of 300 Park Avenue, an office building across the street from the Waldorf Astoria, is seeking a two-year extension on a $485 million loan coming due in August, according to KBRA Analytics. The property is owned by a joint venture including Tishman Speyer and several unnamed investors.The 25-story building, built in 1955, is the headquarters for Colgate-Palmolive. But the consumer products conglomerate is shrinking its presence there.“We requested that our loan be transferred to the special servicer well in advance of its maturity so that we can work together on a mutually beneficial extension,” said Bud Perrone, a spokesman for Tishman Speyer.Portions of a bond deal that includes the 300 Park Avenue loan were downgraded last fall by Fitch Ratings because some tenants had left the building, and a lower-rated slice of the bond now trades at about 85 cents on the dollar.Across the country, an investment fund connected to the real estate giant Brookfield Properties defaulted on $750 million of loans for the Gas Company Tower and a nearby building, 777 Tower, in downtown Los Angeles, setting up a possible foreclosure or a sale of the properties, according to the fund.Andrew Brent, a spokesman for Brookfield, said in an emailed statement that office buildings suffering financial challenges were “a very small percentage of our portfolio.”Even as building owners struggle with vacancies and high interest rates, some have found a way to put their properties on a more solid footing.The owners of the Seagram Building in Manhattan have been working to refinance a portion of a loan that comes due in May.Haruka Sakaguchi for The New York TimesNew tenants are needed to fill several floors that Wells Fargo occupied in the Seagram Building.Haruka Sakaguchi for The New York TimesRFR Holding, an investment group that bought the Seagram Building in 2000, is trying to lure tenants back to the office.Haruka Sakaguchi for The New York TimesThe owners of the Seagram Building at 375 Park Avenue in Manhattan have been working to refinance a $200 million portion of a loan that comes due in May while finding new tenants to fill several floors previously occupied by Wells Fargo.RFR Holding, an investment group led by Aby J. Rosen and Michael Fuchs, bought the 38-story building in 2000 for $379 million. To entice employees back to the office, RFR last year built a $25 million “playground” in an underground garage that’s equipped with a climbing wall and pickleball and basketball courts. Four new tenants signed leases in the past few months, according to Trepp.Even with all the vacant space, some landlords like Mr. Rechler’s RXR still want to build new towers. RXR is moving ahead with plans to build what could be one of the tallest buildings in the country at 175 Park Avenue.“It’s one of a kind in what is and will always be one of the best office markets in the world,” he said, referring to the tower. More

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    Inflation Is Still High. What’s Driving It Has Changed.

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    Two years ago, high inflation was about supply shortages and pricier goods. Then it was about war in Ukraine and energy. These days, services are key.America is now two years into abnormally high inflation — and while the nation appears to be past the worst phase of the biggest spike in price increases in half a century, the road back to normal is a long and uncertain one.The pop in prices over the 24 months that ended in March eroded wage gains, burdened consumers and spurred a Federal Reserve response that has the potential to cause a recession.What generated the painful inflation, and what comes next? A look through the data reveals a situation that arose from pandemic disruptions and the government’s response, was worsened by the war in Ukraine and is now cooling as supply problems clear up and the economy slows. But it also illustrates that U.S. inflation today is drastically different from the price increases that first appeared in 2021, driven by stubborn price increases for services like airfare and child care instead of by the cost of goods.Fresh wage and price data set for release on Friday are expected to show continued evidence of slow and steady moderation in March. Now Fed officials must judge whether the cool-down is happening fast enough to assure them that inflation will promptly return to normal — a focus when the central bank releases its next interest rate decision on Wednesday.Inflation Is Slowly Coming DownYear-over-year percentage change in the Consumer Price Index

    Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics; New York Fed’s Global Supply Chain Pressure IndexBy The New York TimesThe Fed aims for 2 percent inflation on average over time using the Personal Consumption Expenditures index, which will be released on Friday. That figure pulls some of its data from the Consumer Price Index report, which was released two weeks ago and offered a clear picture of the recent inflation trajectory.Before the pandemic, inflation hovered around 2 percent as measured by the overall Consumer Price Index and by a “core” measure that strips out food and fuel prices to get a clearer sense of the underlying trend. It dropped sharply at the pandemic’s start in early 2020 as people stayed home and stopped spending money, then rebounded starting in March 2021.Some of that initial pop was due to a “base effect.” Fresh inflation data were being measured against pandemic-depressed numbers from the year before, which made the new figures look elevated. But by the end of summer 2021, it was clear that something more fundamental was happening with prices.Demand for goods was unusually high: Families had more money than usual after months at home and repeated stimulus checks, and they were spending it on cars, couches and deck furniture. At the same time, the pandemic had shut down many factories, limiting how much supply the world’s companies could churn out. Shipping costs surged, goods shortages mounted, and the prices of physical purchases from appliances to cars jumped.Higher Prices for Services Are Now Driving InflationBreakdown of the inflation rate, by category

    Note: The services category excludes energy services, and the goods category excludes food and energy goods.Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics; New York Times analysisBy The New York TimesBy late 2021, a second trend was also getting started. Services costs, which include nonphysical purchases like tutoring and tax preparation, had begun to climb quickly.As with goods prices, that tied back to the strong demand. Because households were in good spending shape, landlords, child care providers and restaurants could charge more without losing customers.Across the economy, firms seized the moment to pad their bottom lines; profit margins soared in late 2021 before moderating late last year.Businesses were also covering their growing costs. Wages had started to climb more quickly than usual, which meant that corporate labor bills were swelling.Pay Has Climbed Quickly, but Not as Fast as PricesYear-over-year percentage change in the Employment Cost Index, a measure of labor costs, and the Consumer Price Index, a measure of living costs

    Note: The Consumer Price Index is reported monthly. The Employment Cost Index is reported quarterly and is as of Q4 2022. Early 2023 data is a Goldman Sachs forecast.Source: Bureau of Labor StatisticsBy The New York TimesFed officials had expected goods shortages to fade, but the combination of faster inflation for services and accelerating wage growth captured their attention.Even if pay gains had not been the original cause of inflation, policymakers were concerned that it would be difficult for price increases to return to a normal pace with pay rates rising briskly. Companies, they thought, would keep raising prices to pass on those labor expenses.Worried central bankers started raising interest rates in March 2022 to hit the brakes on growth by making it more expensive to borrow to buy a car or house or expand a business. The goal was to slow the labor market and make it harder for firms to raise prices. In just over a year, they lifted rates to nearly 5 percent — the fastest adjustment since the 1980s.Yet in early 2022, Fed policy started fighting yet another force stoking inflation. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that February caused food and fuel prices to surge. Between that and the cost increases in goods and services, overall inflation reached its highest peak since the 1980s: about 9 percent in July.In the months since, inflation has slowed as cost increases for energy and goods have cooled. But food prices are still climbing swiftly, and — crucially — cost increases in services remain rapid.In fact, services prices are now the very center of the inflation story.They could soon start to fade in one key area. Housing costs have been picking up quickly for months, but rent increases have recently slowed in real-time private sector data. That is expected to feed into official inflation numbers by later this year.That has left policymakers focused on other services, which span an array of purchases including medical care, car repairs and many vacation expenses. How quickly those prices — often called “core services ex-housing” — can retreat will determine whether and when inflation can return to normal.Excluding Housing Costs, Prices of Core Services Are RisingYear-over-year percentage change in the Consumer Price Index for services, stripping out housing and energy costs

    Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics; New York Times analysisBy The New York TimesNow, Fed officials will have to assess whether the economy is poised to slow enough to bring down the cost of those critical services.Between the central bank’s rate moves and recent banking turmoil, some officials think that it may be. Policymakers projected in March that they would raise interest rates just once more in 2023, a move that is widely expected at their meeting next week.But market watchers will listen intently when Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, gives his postmeeting news conference. He could offer hints at whether officials think the inflation saga is heading for a speedy conclusion — or another chapter.Ben Casselman More

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    G.D.P. Report: U.S. Economy Grew at 1.1% Rate in First Quarter

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    The gross domestic product increased for the third straight quarter as consumer spending remained robust despite higher interest rates.Higher interest rates took a toll on the U.S. economy in early 2023, but free-spending consumers are keeping a recession at bay, at least for now.Gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, rose at a 1.1 percent annual rate in the first quarter, the Commerce Department said on Thursday. That was down from a 2.6 percent rate in the last three months of 2022 but nonetheless represented a third straight quarter of growth after output contracted in the first half of last year.The figures are preliminary and will be revised at least twice as more complete data becomes available.Growth in the first quarter was dragged down by weakness in housing and business investment, both of which are heavily influenced by interest rates. The Federal Reserve has raised rates by nearly five percentage points since early last year in an effort to tamp down inflation.Consumers, however, have proved resilient in the face of both rising prices and higher borrowing costs. Inflation-adjusted spending rose at a 3.7 percent annual rate in the first quarter, up from 1 percent in the prior period. Consumers have been buoyed by a strong job market and rising wages, which have helped offset high prices.Spending slowed as the quarter progressed, however, and forecasters warn that it could weaken further amid headlines about layoffs, bank failures and warnings of a possible recession.“Consumer spending is still moving up, but I don’t know how long that can last,” said Ben Herzon, an economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence. “Confidence is weak and has been weakening. You’ve got to wonder, will that soon translate into a pullback in spending?”A gradual slowdown would be welcomed by Fed policymakers, who have been trying to cool off the economy enough to bring down inflation, but not by so much that it leads to widespread layoffs and unemployment.“It’s not a free fall,” said Dana Peterson, chief economist at the Conference Board, a business group. “It’s a controlled descent, and that’s what the Fed is trying to achieve with higher interest rates.” More

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    in Economy

    First Republic Lurches as It Struggles to Find a Savior

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    The bank is sitting on big losses and paying more to borrow money than it is making on its loans to homeowners and businesses.First Republic Bank is sliding dangerously into a financial maelstrom, one from which an exit appears increasingly difficult.Hardly a household name until a few weeks ago, First Republic is now a top concern for investors and bankers on Wall Street and officials in Washington. The likeliest outcome for the bank, people close to the situation said, would need to involve the federal government, alone or in some combination with a private investor.While the bank, with 88 branches focused mostly on the coasts, is still open for business, no one connected to it, including its executives and some board members, would say how much longer it could exist in its current form.First Republic, based in San Francisco, has been widely seen as the most in-danger bank since Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank collapsed last month. Like Silicon Valley Bank, it catered to the well-off — a group of customers able to pull their money en masse — and amassed a hoard of loans and assets whose value has suffered in an era of rising interest rates.Yet while SVB and Signature survived just days under pressure, First Republic has neither fallen nor thrived. It has withstood a deposit flight and a cratering stock price. Every attempt by the bank’s executives and advisers to project confidence appears to have had the opposite effect.The bank’s founder and executive chairman, Jim Herbert, until recently one of the more admired figures in the industry, has disappeared from public view. On March 13, Jim Cramer, the CNBC host, said on the air that Mr. Herbert had told him that the bank was doing “business as usual,” and that there were “not any sizable number of people wanting their money.”That was belied by the bank’s earnings report this week, which stated that “First Republic began experiencing unprecedented deposit outflows” on March 10.Neither Mr. Herbert nor the bank’s representatives would comment Wednesday, as First Republic’s stock continued a harrowing slide, dropping about 30 percent to close the day at just $5.69 — down from about $150 a year earlier. On Tuesday, the stock plummeted 49 percent. The company is now worth a little more than $1 billion, or about one-twentieth its valuation before the banking turmoil began in March.In what has become a disquieting pattern, the New York Stock Exchange halted trading in the shares 16 times on Wednesday because volatility thresholds were triggered.

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    First Republic Bank’s share price
    Source: FactSetBy The New York TimesStock prices are always an imperfect measure of a lender’s health, and there are strict rules about what types of entities can acquire a bank. Still, First Republic’s stock slide means that its branches and $103 billion in deposits could be bought for, theoretically, an amount less than the market capitalization of Portillo’s, the Chicago-area hot dog purveyor. Of course, any company that buys First Republic would be taking on multibillion-dollar losses on its loan portfolio and assets.The bank is more likely to fall into the hands of the government. That outcome would likely wipe out shareholders and put the bank’s fate in the hands of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.The F.D.I.C. by its own rules guarantees that deposit accounts only up to $250,000 will be made whole, though in practice — and in the case of SVB and Signature — it can make accounts of all sizes whole if several top government officials invoke a special legal provision. Of First Republic’s remaining deposits, roughly half, or nearly $50 billion, were over the insured threshold as of March 31, including the $30 billion deposited by big banks in March.In conversations with industry and government officials, First Republic’s advisers have proposed various restructuring solutions that would involve the government, in one form or another, according to people familiar with the matter. The government could seek to minimize a buyer’s financial risk, the people said, asking not to be identified.Thus far, the Biden administration and Federal Reserve appear to have demurred. Policy experts have said officials would find it more difficult to intervene to save First Republic because of restrictions Congress enacted after the 2008 financial crisis.As a result, six weeks of efforts by First Republic and its advisers to sell all or part of its business have not resulted in a viable plan to save the bank — at least thus far.The state of affairs became plain after the close of trading on Monday, when First Republic announced first-quarter results that showed that it had lost $102 billion in customer deposits since early March. Those withdrawals were slightly ameliorated by the coordinated emergency move of 11 large U.S. banks to temporarily deposit $30 billion into First Republic.To plug the hole, First Republic borrowed $92 billion, mostly from the Fed and government-backed lending groups, essentially replacing its deposits with loans. While the move helped keep the bank going, it essentially undermined its business model, replacing relatively cheap deposits with more expensive loans.The bank is paying more in interest to the government on that new debt than it is earning on its long-term investments, which include mortgage loans to its well-heeled customers on the coasts, funding for real estate projects and the like.One of the biggest parts of the bank’s business was offering large home loans with attractive interest rates to affluent people. And unlike other banks that make a lot of mortgages, First Republic kept many of those loans rather than packaging them into mortgage-backed securities and selling them to investors. At the end of December, the bank had nearly $103 billion in home loans on its books, up from $80 billion a year earlier.But most of those loans were made when the mortgage interest rates were much lower than they are today. That means those loans are worth a lot less, and anybody looking to buy First Republic would be taking on those losses.It is not clear what First Republic can realistically do to make itself or its assets more attractive to a buyer.Among the only tangible changes that the bank has committed to is cutting as much as 25 percent of its staff and slashing executive compensation by an unspecified amount. On its earnings call, First Republic’s executives declined to take questions and spoke for just 12 minutes. More

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    America’s Inflation Antihero Gets a Makeover

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    As the Fed fights inflation with a wary eye on the 1970s, some are arguing that Arthur Burns, the Fed chair at the time, gets too bad a rap.The years have not been kind to Arthur Burns, who led the Federal Reserve from 1970 to 1978 and is often remembered as perhaps the worst chair ever to head America’s central bank. His poor policy decisions, critics say, allowed inflation in the 1970s to jump out of control.Chris Hughes thinks he deserves another look. Mr. Hughes, 39, is a newly accepted doctoral student focused on central bank history at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. This is a third career for Mr. Hughes, who was Mark Zuckerberg’s college roommate and a founder of Facebook, a first act that left him with a personal fortune estimated to total hundreds of millions of dollars.Mr. Hughes then bought and for four years served as publisher of The New Republic, the liberal magazine. Starting this fall, he will spend his days studying the law and politics of central bank development and writing a book on the history of financial markets and politics.As a person who knows something about reinvention, Mr. Hughes thinks Mr. Burns should get one, too.He wrote a 6,000-word article for the journal Democracy on how America has misunderstood the former Fed chair, made the argument on NPR’s Planet Money and is now taking his spiel to academic gatherings.His point? He thinks Mr. Burns is portrayed in ways that are unfair to him — and which may offer the wrong lessons as America approaches the inflation burdening the rest of us at the grocery store, used car lot and day-care center today.Mr. Burns is frequently remembered in central banking and economic circles as a weak leader who failed to lift interest rates enough to control inflation because he feared harming the economy too much; Mr. Hughes and other Burns revisionists — a small but growing group of historians and economists who don’t necessarily love him, but do think he got an unfair rap — see him as someone who tried to balance concerns about hurting workers with a dedication to slowing down price increases. History often paints him as a political shill; the contrarians argue that he saw controlling inflation as a project that the Fed and elected officials in the White House and Congress could and should share.And because Mr. Burns gets blamed, without much nuance, for his failure to contain inflation, Mr. Hughes thinks that people miss the possible virtues of his more complicated view of price increases — as a problem that required multiple players, alongside the Fed, to successfully tackle.“I think he’s easily weaponized,” Mr. Hughes said in an interview. “The caricature is worth revisiting.”Mr. Burns plays the role of antihero in most stories about the Great Inflation of the 1970s — tales that are repeated often in academic circles and the news media as a warning about what not to do.Mr. Burns, a conservative economist, presided over rate increases during the 1970s, but he never pushed them far enough to bring inflation under control. And he may have pursued that start-and-stop approach partly because he was bending to political pressure.Richard Nixon with Arthur Burns in 1968. In the run-up to the 1972 election, President Nixon, who appointed Mr. Burns as Fed chair, urged him to cut rates.Associated PressPresident Richard Nixon, who appointed Mr. Burns as Fed chair, wanted him to cut rates in the run-up to the 1972 election. In taped conversations, Nixon urged Mr. Burns to push the Fed’s policy committee to lower borrowing costs.“Just kick ’em in the rump a little,” Nixon was recorded saying. Fed officials did cut rates in the latter part of 1971.Inflation deepened as the Fed’s rate moves remained more dawdling than decisive, and Mr. Burns’s name eventually became synonymous with bad central banking: irresolute and politicized. He remains the key historical foil to Paul Volcker, Fed chair from 1979 to 1987, who pushed interest rates up to nearly 20 percent in 1981, crashed the economy into a deep recession and ultimately saw price increases cool. Mr. Volcker, hated by many in his time, is now recalled as an almost heroic figure.The parable of Mr. Burns and Mr. Volcker retains a powerful hold today, as the Fed contends with the first major burst of inflation since the 1970s and ’80s. Fed officials regularly emphasize that they view a noncommittal approach to raising interest rates to slow the economy and choke off inflation — Mr. Burns’s style — as a mistake.Meanwhile, Mr. Volcker described his own approach as one of “keeping at it.” Jerome H. Powell, the current Fed chair, has echoed that phrase aspirationally.It is not clear whether the Fed would pursue a strategy just like Mr. Volcker’s. Mr. Powell has publicly noted that today’s circumstances differ from those of the 1970s. Nor do officials plan to push rates to the double-digit heights they reached in 1981 and 1982. But Mr. Volcker’s policies came at such a cost to workers, pushing unemployment up to a staggering 10.8 percent, that mere admiration of his approach has been enough to stir concern among some liberal economists and historians.Mr. Hughes agrees that rate increases have been necessary, but he is also pushing for a more detailed reading of Mr. Burns’ legacy. He has spent the past four years researching central bank history, including as a graduate student of economics at the New School in New York City, where he lives with his husband — a former Democratic congressional candidate — and their two children. He remains a senior fellow at the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy at the New School.Chris Hughes, a doctoral student on Fed history at Wharton, wrote a 6,000-word journal article defending Mr. Burns’s actions as Fed chair.Gili Benita for The New York TimesHis own rapid jump from an adolescence in North Carolina’s middle class to a young adulthood at the upper end of the Bay Area elite, one that pushed his net worth to just shy of $500 million before his 30th birthday, piqued his interested in the design of the nation’s economic system — in particular, how it intersects with government policy and how it allows immense inequality.Perhaps no part of that design is more complicated, or less well understood, than the Fed. “Some are looking at Burns as an example of what not to do,” said Mr. Hughes, who quickly became intrigued by the 1970s. “But I think that’s not necessarily right.”Tradeoffs between inflation and employment could be particularly stark in the coming months. Officials have rapidly lifted their main policy rate over the past year to nearly 5 percent. At their upcoming meeting in May or shortly thereafter, central bankers are poised to wrestle with when they ought to stop raising interest rates.And as 2023 progresses and growth slows, unemployment is expected to rise. Policymakers will most likely need to decide how they want to strike the balance between fostering a strong job market and controlling inflation in a slowing economy. Should policymakers keep rates high even if unemployment rises substantially?Mr. Burns avoided punishingly high rates for reasons beyond his politics, Mr. Hughes and those who agree with him argue. While he deeply hated inflation, he blamed supply-related forces, including union bargaining power, for the jump in prices. The Fed’s tools affect mostly demand, so he thought other parts of the government could do a better job of tackling those forces. Relying on rates alone to fully control inflation would come at an untenable economic cost.He was working from “a place of ideological conviction,” Mr. Hughes said.Still, many economists think Mr. Burns deserves his bad reputation, whatever his motivations.Because his Fed took so long to control inflation, households and businesses came to expect fast price increases in the future, said Donald Kohn, a former Fed vice chair who worked at a regional Fed during the Burns era. That changed consumer and corporate behavior — people asked for bigger raises and companies instituted regular price jumps.As that happened, inflation became a more permanent feature of daily life, making it harder to stamp out. If Mr. Burns hadn’t let inflation spin so far out of control, this argument goes, Mr. Volcker might never have needed to cause such a painful recession to tame it.Paul Volcker, the Fed chair from 1979 to 1987, raised interest rates to nearly 20 percent in 1981, crashing the economy into a deep recession.Chick Harrity/Associated Press“It felt like he was trying to find a way to bring down inflation without paying the price — and it just wasn’t possible,” said Mr. Kohn, who remembered Mr. Burns as an “autocratic” leader who did not accept differing views from the Fed’s research staff.“The Fed was dealt a bad hand and played it poorly,” he added.When Mr. Burns’s reputation went down in flames, so did the idea that controlling inflation should be a joint effort of the Fed, Congress and the White House. Since Mr. Volcker’s stand, inflation has been seen, first and foremost, as the central bank’s problem.Many economists see the Fed’s independence from politics and clear focus on controlling prices as a feature, not a bug: Someone now stands ready to promptly clamp down on price increases. Economists even argue that today’s Fed won’t have to act like Mr. Volcker specifically because it will not act like Mr. Burns.Yet skeptics of Mr. Volcker’s economic shock treatment have pointed out that he partly got lucky. Oil embargoes that had pushed inflation much higher eased during his tenure.Given the towering costs Mr. Volcker’s policies inflicted on workers, some are asking: Even if it failed to stem inflation, is it fair to conclude that everything about Mr. Burns’s approach was wrong?“Our simple story about what happened makes it harder to see the complexities of what is happening now,” said Lev Menand, who researches money and central banking at Columbia Law School.Mr. Hughes argued in his essay published last fall that modern policymakers could learn from Mr. Burns’s cross-government collaboration. Raising taxes, revising zoning rules, and other frequent Democratic priorities could help temper price increases, he thinks.Other suggestions for government intervention to tame price increases have gone even further: Isabella Weber, an economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has suggested that price and wage controls should be reconsidered. Their design and implementation in the 1970s did not work, but that does not mean they never could.But such interventions — even if successful, which is far from assured — would take time. The way today’s central bankers understand Mr. Burns as disaster and Mr. Volcker as savior could matter more immediately.And while Peter Conti-Brown, a Fed historian at Wharton and Mr. Hughes’s thesis adviser, said he thought Mr. Burns deserved most of the blame he received for failing to control inflation, he also thought it was possible that Mr. Volcker had been improperly lionized.To foster both maximum employment and stable inflation — the Fed’s twin jobs — is a balancing act, and to do it requires acting like neither Mr. Volcker, with his firm concentration on inflation, nor Mr. Burns, with his yielding one, he said.“I think in the history of central banking, there are few if any heroes,” Mr. Conti-Brown said. “There are also few if any villains.” More