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    First Republic Bank Enters New Free Fall as Concerns Mount

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    The bank’s shares fell by about 50 percent on Tuesday, a day after it said customers had pulled $100 billion in deposits in the first quarter.First Republic Bank’s stock closed down 50 percent Tuesday, a day after a troubling earnings report and a conference call with analysts in which the company’s executives refused questions. The speed of the decline set off a series of volatility-induced trading halts by the New York Stock Exchange.On Monday, after the close of regular stock trading, First Republic released results that showed just how perilous the bank’s future had become since mid-March following the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. First Republic said its clients pulled $102 billion in deposits in the first quarter — well over half the $176 billion it held at the end of last year.The bank received a temporary $30 billion lifeline last month from the nation’s biggest banks to help shore up its business. Those banks, however, can withdraw their deposits as soon as July. In the first quarter, First Republic also borrowed $92 billion, mostly from the Federal Reserve and government-backed lending groups, essentially replacing its deposits with loans.First Republic is considered the most vulnerable regional bank after the banking crisis in March. What happens to it could also affect investors’ confidence in other regional banks and the financial system more broadly.The bank’s executives did little to establish confidence during its conference call, offering just 12 minutes of prepared remarks. The bank also said on Monday that it would cut as much as a quarter of its work force, and slash executive compensation by an unspecified sum.“This is a trust issue, as it is for any bank, and when trust is lost, money will flee,” Aswath Damodaran, a finance professor at New York University, wrote in an email.An analyst at Wolfe Research, Bill Carcache, laid out what he called “the long list of questions we weren’t allowed to ask” in a research note on Tuesday. Among them: How can the bank survive without raising new money, and how can it continue to provide attentive customer service — a staple of its reputation among wealthy clients — while cutting the very staff who provide it?The bank’s options to save itself absent a government seizure or intervention are limited and challenging. No buyer has emerged for the bank in its entirety. Any bank or investor group interested in taking over the bank would have to take on First Republic’s loan portfolio, which could saddle the buyer with billions of dollars in losses based on the recent interest rate moves. The bank is also difficult to sell off in pieces because its customers use many different services like checking accounts, mortgages and wealth management.There are no easy solutions for First Republic’s situation, said Kathryn Judge, a financial regulation expert at Columbia Law School. “If there were attractive options, they would have pursued them already,” Ms. Judge explained.The Fed can no longer take on some of a bank’s financial risk to ease a takeover in the way it did in 2008, because reforms after the financial crisis changed its powers. And while the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation might be able to help in some way, that would most likely involve failing the bank and invoking a “systemic risk exception,” which would require sign-off by officials across several agencies, Ms. Judge said.Yet if the bank does fail, the government will have to decide whether to protect its uninsured depositors, which could also be a tough call, she said.“There’s really no easy answer,” Ms. Judge said.Representatives for the Fed and the F.D.I.C. declined to comment.Shares of other banks also fell on Tuesday, though not nearly as much as First Republic. The KBW Bank Index, a proxy for the industry, closed down about 3.5 percent.Separately, the Fed said on Tuesday that its review of the supervision and regulation of Silicon Valley Bank will be released at 11 a.m. on Friday.Rob Copeland More

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    As Possible Debt Limit Crisis Nears, Wall Street Shrugs

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    Few investors have focused on the possibility that Congress will not raise the nation’s borrowing limit in time to avoid an economically catastrophic default.WASHINGTON — Speaker Kevin McCarthy chose the New York Stock Exchange on Monday to deliver his most detailed comments yet on House Republicans’ demands for raising the nation’s borrowing limit. But his comments made little impression on Wall Street, where investors continue to trade stocks and Treasury bonds under the assumption that Congress and President Biden will find a way to avoid a calamitous government default.The lack of a market panic about the talks reflects a been-there, done-that attitude that investors have increasingly taken to partisan showdowns over taxes, spending and the government’s ability to pay its bills on time, which lawmakers often resolve at the last possible moment.But there are reasons to believe that this time could play out differently, starting with the chaos in Mr. McCarthy’s caucus — and new warnings that lawmakers might have less time to raise the $31.4 trillion limit than previously thought.The next few weeks will more precisely determine how quickly the government will exhaust its ability to pay bondholders, employees, Social Security recipients and everyone else it sends money to on a regular basis. That’s because data on the government’s tax receipts for the year will come into sharper focus after Tuesday’s deadline for people to file individual income tax returns for 2022.On Tuesday, Goldman Sachs economists sounded a warning that the potential default date could be much sooner than previous forecasts — which typically pegged the date in July or August — if revenue comes in soft. “While the data are still very preliminary, weak tax collections so far in April suggest an increased probability that the debt limit deadline will be reached in the first half of June,” they wrote.Republicans are refusing to raise the borrowing cap unless Mr. Biden agrees to reduce government spending and slow the growth of the national debt, a position that risks plunging the United States into recession if the Treasury Department runs out of money to pay all its bills on time. But Mr. McCarthy has struggled to unite his Republicans around specific cuts, even though he said Monday that he will put such a plan on the House floor next week.Moderates in the Republican caucus are wary of deep cuts to popular domestic programs, like education and national parks, that would be spurred by his proposal to cap domestic spending growth at a level well below the current inflation rate. Fiscal hawks, including a faction that resisted Mr. McCarthy’s appointment as speaker and could effectively force a vote to oust him at any time, have pushed for far more aggressive reductions. They include lawmakers who have never voted to raise or suspend the debt limit, even under President Donald J. Trump, who signed three suspensions of the limit into law.Mr. McCarthy detailed his plan to fellow Republicans on Tuesday. As outlined on Monday, it would raise the limit for about a year. It would also return most domestic spending to fiscal year 2022 levels and cap its growth over a decade. Mr. McCarthy also wants to add work requirements for recipients of federal food assistance and reduce federal regulations on fossil fuel development and other projects, which he says will increase economic growth.It is unclear if enough Republicans would vote for that package to ensure its passage in the House. Senate Democrats would almost certainly reject it, as would Mr. Biden, who has said repeatedly that he expects Congress to raise the borrowing limit with no strings attached.Mr. Biden has shown no indication that he will intervene to speed up discussions over raising the limit, or seek to broker any deals in Congress to do so. The president has said he will negotiate taxes and spending levels separately from the borrowing limit. But he and his aides are refusing to engage further with Mr. McCarthy on fiscal policy until Republicans rally around a budget plan.Mr. Biden slammed Mr. McCarthy’s plan in a speech on Tuesday, saying he has “proposed huge cuts to important programs that millions of Americans count on.” Mr. Biden said that Mr. McCarthy had “threatened to become the first speaker to default on our debt unless he gets the cuts he wants.”The only market thus far to reflect stress about the debt limit is the one most attuned to it: credit default swaps, which price the risk of the government failing to make scheduled payments to bondholders. Mr. McCarthy shrugged off that stress in a question-and-answer session after his speech on Monday.“Markets go up and down,” he said.Stock and bond markets were unfazed after Mr. McCarthy’s comments. They have in recent months been far more reactive to any evidence about what the Federal Reserve will do next in its campaign to tame high inflation by raising interest rates.Some White House officials privately say they expect Republicans to step up their efforts to raise the limit if and when investors begin to worry more about negotiations. That’s what happened in 2011, when a showdown between congressional Republicans and President Barack Obama nearly ended in default. Stocks plunged, and borrowing costs rose for corporations and home buyers. The damage took months to repair.Some Republicans are similarly hopeful that a wake-up on Wall Street will push Mr. Biden to change his negotiating stance, including Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.“I don’t think market participants have any idea of how bad off these negotiations are right now, which should give them pause and concern, and actually should bring the president to the table,” he said.Catie Edmondson More

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    Fed Officials Fretted Bank Turmoil Could Have Serious Economic Consequences

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    Minutes from the Federal Reserve’s March 21-22 meeting showed that officials were grappling with how much more to lift borrowing costs.WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve officials wanted to remain flexible about the path ahead for interest rates, minutes from their March meeting showed, as they weighed a strong labor market and stubbornly high inflation against the risks that recent bank turmoil posed to the economy.Central bankers have spent more than a year waging a battle against the most painful burst of price increases in decades, raising interest rates to slow the economy and to wrestle price increases under control. After lifting their main rate to nearly 5 percent over the past 12 months, policymakers are contemplating when to stop those moves. But that choice has been complicated by recent high-profile bank blowups.Before Silicon Valley Bank failed on March 10 and Signature Bank failed on March 12, sending jitters across the global banking system, Fed officials had been contemplating making several more rate moves in 2023 to bring stubbornly inflation back under control. “Some” had even thought a large half-point rate move might be appropriate at the March 21-22 gathering, the minutes from the meeting showed.But officials adjusted their views after the shock to the banking system, the minutes released on Wednesday made clear. The Fed lifted rates at the March meeting, but only by a quarter point, and officials forecast just one more rate increase this year. Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, made it clear during his news conference after the meeting that whether and how much officials adjusted policy going forward would hinge on what happened both to credit conditions and to incoming economic data.At the meeting, “several participants emphasized the need to retain flexibility and optionality in determining the appropriate stance of monetary policy given the highly uncertain economic outlook,” the minutes showed.Officials on the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee thought that “inflation remained much too high and that the labor market remained tight,” on one hand, but that they would also need to watch for signs that the bank issues had curbed bank lending and business and consumer confidence enough to meaningfully slow the economy.They said it would be “particularly important” to watch data on credit and financial conditions, which signal how difficult and expensive it is to borrow or raise money, the minutes showed.In the weeks since the meeting, early signs that lenders are becoming more cautious have begun to surface, but it is still too soon to tell exactly how much credit rates and availability will adjust in response to the turmoil.Fed staff projected that the bank tumult would even spur a “mild” recession later this year. “Given their assessment of the potential economic effects of the recent banking-sector developments, the staff’s projection at the time of the March meeting included a mild recession starting later this year with a recovery over the subsequent two years,” the minutes showed.At the same time, the latest data have suggested that inflation is slowing — though it remains abnormally rapid. A closely watched measure of consumer prices climbed 5 percent in March, down from 6 percent the previous month, as cheaper gas and flat food prices brought relief to consumers. But after stripping out food and fuel costs to get a sense of underlying trends, the “core” inflation index ticked up slightly on an annual basis to 5.6 percent.The current inflation rate is slower than the roughly 9 percent peak reached last summer, but it remains far faster than the rate that was normal before the pandemic and is still notably too quick for comfort. The Fed aims for 2 percent inflation on average over time, defining that goal using a separate inflation measure that is released at more of a delay.Financial markets barely budged in the immediate aftermath of the minutes’ release. From stocks to bonds to the U.S. dollar, the earlier inflation data had proved more consequential, suggesting that the minutes presented few surprises that notably moved the needle for investors.Fed officials — including Mary C. Daly, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and Thomas Barkin, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond — suggested on Wednesday that the latest consumer price figures were encouraging but not decisive.“It was pretty much as expected,” Mr. Barkin said on CNBC. Ms. Daly said during an event in Salt Lake City that the report was “good news,” but noted that inflation was still elevated.The Fed’s next rate decision is set for release on May 3.Joe Rennison More

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    Banks Are Borrowing More From the Fed: What to Know

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    As turmoil sweeps the United States financial system, banks are turning to the Federal Reserve for loans to get them through the squeeze.Banks are turning to the Federal Reserve’s loan programs to access funding as turmoil sweeps the financial system in the wake several high-profile bank failures.The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank on March 10 followed by Signature Bank on March 12 prompted depositors to pull their money from some banks and sent the stock prices for financial firms on a roller-coaster ride. The tumult has left some institutions looking for a ready source of cash — either to pay back customers or to make sure they have enough money on hand to weather a rough patch.That is where the Fed comes in. The central bank was founded in 1913 partly to serve as a backstop to the banking system — it can loan financial institutions money against their assets in a pinch, which can help banks raise cash more quickly than they would be able to if they had to sell those securities on the open market.But the Fed is now going further than that: Central bankers on March 12 created a program that is lending to banks against their financial assets as if those securities were still worth their original value. Why? As the Fed has raised interest rates to contain inflation over the past year, bonds and mortgage debt that paid lower rate of interest became less valuable.By lending against the assets at their original price instead of their lower market value, the Fed can insulate banks from having to sell those securities at big losses. That could reassure depositors and stave off bank runs.Two key programs together lent $163.9 billion this week, according to Fed data released on Wednesday — roughly in line with $164.8 billion a week earlier. That is much higher than normal. The report usually shows banks borrowing less than $10 billion at the Fed’s so-called “discount window” program.The elevated lending underlines a troubling reality: Stress continues to course through the banking system. The question is whether the government’s response, including a new central bank lending program, will be enough to quell it.A Little HistoryBefore diving into what the fresh figures mean, it’s important to understand how the Fed’s lending programs work.The first, and more traditional, is the discount window, affectionately called “disco” by financial wonks. It is the Fed’s original tool: At its founding, the central bank didn’t buy and sell securities as it does today, but it could lend to banks against collateral.In the modern era, though, borrowing from the discount window has been stigmatized. There is a perception in the financial industry that if a big bank taps it, it must be a sign of distress. Borrower identities are released, though it’s on a two-year delay. Its most frequent users are community banks, though some big regional lenders like Bancorp used it in 2020 at the onset of the pandemic. Fed officials have tweaked the program’s terms over the years to try to make it more attractive during times of trouble, but with mixed results.Enter the Fed’s new facility, which is like the discount window on steroids. Officially called the Bank Term Funding Program, it leverages emergency lending powers that the Fed has had since the Great Depression — ones that the central bank can use in “extraordinary and exigent” circumstances with the sign-off of the Treasury secretary. Through it, the Fed is lending against Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities valued at their original price for up to a year.Policymakers seem to hope that the program will help reduce interest rate risk in the banking system — the problem of the day — while also getting around the stigma of borrowing from the discount window.Banks are Borrowing More Than UsualThe backstops seem to be working:  During the recent turmoil, banks are using both programs.Discount window borrowing climbed to $110.2 billion as of Wednesday, down slightly from $152.9 billion the previous week — when the turmoil started. Those figures are abnormally elevated: Discount window borrowing had stood at just $4.6 billion the week before the tumult began.The new program also had borrowers. As of Wednesday, banks were borrowing $53.7 billion, according to the Fed data. The previous week, it stood at $11.9 billion. The names of specific borrowers will not be released until 2025.The Borrowing Could Be a Sign of TroubleThe next issue is perhaps more critical: Analysts are trying to parse whether it is a good thing that banks are turning to these programs, or whether the stepped up borrowing is a sign that their problems remain serious.“You still have some banks that feel the need to tap these facilities,” said Subadra Rajappa, head of U.S. rates strategy at Société Générale. “There’s definitely cash moving from the banking sector and into other investments, or into the biggest banks.”While Silicon Valley Bank had some obvious weaknesses that regulation experts said were not widely shared across the banking system, its failure has prodded people to look more closely at banks — and depositors have been punishing those with similarities to the failed institutions by withdrawing their cash. PacWest Bancorp has been among the struggling banks. The company said this week that it had borrowed $10.5 billion from the Fed’s discount window.Or the Borrowing Could Be a Good SignThe fact that banks feel comfortable using these tools might reassure depositors and financial markets that cash will keep flowing, which might help avert further troubles.In the past, borrowing from the Fed carried a stigma because it signaled a bank might be in trouble. This time around, the securities the banks hold aren’t at risk of defaulting, they are just worth less in the bond market as a result of the rapid increase in interest rates.“For me, this is a very different situation to what I have seen in the past,” said Greg Peters, co-chief investment officer at PGIM Fixed Income. More

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    Low Rates Were Meant to Last. Without Them, Finance Is In for a Rough Ride.

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    Economists expected inflation and rates to stay low for years. With Silicon Valley Bank’s implosion, Wall Street is starting to reckon with how wrong that prediction has proved.WASHINGTON — If a number defined the 2010s, it was 2 percent. Inflation, annual economic growth, and interest rates at their highest all hovered around that level — so persistently that economists, the Federal Reserve and Wall Street began to bet that the era of low-everything would last.That bet has gone bad. And with the implosion of Silicon Valley Bank, America is beginning to reckon with the consequences.Inflation surprised economists and policymakers by spiking after the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, and at 6 percent in February, it is proving difficult to stamp out. The Fed has lifted interest rates by 4.5 percentage points in just the past 12 months as it tries to slow the economy and wrestle price increases under control. The central bank’s decision next Wednesday could nudge rates even higher. And that jump in borrowing costs is catching some businesses, investors and households by surprise.Silicon Valley Bank is the most extreme example of an institution’s being caught off guard so far. The bank had amassed a big portfolio of long-term bonds, which pay more interest than shorter-term ones. But it wasn’t paying to sufficiently protect its assets against the possibility of an interest rate spike — and when rates jumped, it found the market value of its holdings seriously dented. The reason: Why would investors want those old bonds when they could buy new ones at more attractive rates?Those impending financial losses helped to spook investors, fueling a bank run that collapsed the institution and shot tremors across the American banking system.The bank’s mistake was a bad — and ultimately lethal — one. But it wasn’t wholly unique.Many banks are holding big portfolios of long-term bonds that are worth a lot less than their original value. U.S. banks were sitting on $620 billion in unrealized losses from securities that had dropped in price at the end of 2022, based on Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation data, with many regional banks facing big hits.Adding in other potential losses, including on mortgages that were extended when rates were low, economists at New York University have estimated that the total may be more like $1.75 trillion. Banks can offset that with higher earnings on deposits — but that doesn’t work if depositors pull their money out, as in Silicon Valley Bank’s case.“How worried should we be comes down to: How likely is it that the deposit franchise leaves?” said Alexi Savov, who wrote the analysis with his colleague Philipp Schnabl.Regulators are conscious of that potentially broad interest rate risk. The Fed unveiled an emergency loan program on Sunday night that will offer banks cash in exchange for their bonds, treating them as though they were still worth their original value in the process. The setup will allow banks to temporarily escape the squeeze they are feeling as interest rates rise.But even if the Fed succeeds at neutralizing the threat of bank runs tied to rising rates, it is likely that other vulnerabilities grew during decades of relatively low interest rates. That could trigger more problems at a time when borrowing costs are substantially higher.Impending financial losses helped to spook investors, fueling a bank run that collapsed Silicon Valley Bank and shot tremors across the U.S. banking system.Jason Henry for The New York Times“There’s an old saying: Whenever the Fed hits the brakes, someone goes through the windshield,” said Michael Feroli, chief economist at J.P. Morgan. “You just never know who it’s going to be.”America has gone through regular bouts of financial pain brought about by rising interest rates. A jump in rates has been blamed for helping to burst the bubble in technology stocks in the early 2000s, and for contributing to the decline in house prices that helped to set off the crash in 2008.Even more closely related to the current moment, a sharp rise in interest rates in the 1970s and 1980s caused acute problems in the savings and loan industry that ended only when the government intervened.There’s a simple logic behind the financial problems that arise from rising interest rates. When borrowing costs are very low, people and businesses need to take on more risk to earn money on their cash — and that typically means that they tie up their money for longer or they throw their cash behind risky ventures.When the Fed raises interest rates to cool the economy and control inflation, though, money moves toward the comparative safety of government bonds and other steady investments. They suddenly pay more, and they seem like a surer bet in a world where the central bank is trying to slow the economy.That helps to explain what is happening in the technology sector in 2023, for example. Investors have pulled back from tech company stocks, which tend to have values that are predicated on expectations for growth. Betting on prospective profits is suddenly less attractive in a higher-rate environment.A more challenging business and financial backdrop has quickly translated into a souring job market in technology. Companies have been making high-profile layoffs, with Meta announcing a fresh round just this week.That is more or less the way Fed rate moves are supposed to work: They diminish growth prospects and make access to financing tougher, curb business expansions, cost jobs and end up slowing demand throughout the economy. Slower demand makes for weaker inflation.But sometimes the pain does not play out in such an orderly and predictable way, as the trouble in the banking system makes clear.“This just teaches you that we really have these blind spots,” said Jeremy Stein, a former Fed governor who is now at Harvard. “You put more pressure on the pipes, and something is going to crack — but you never know where it is going to be.”The Fed was conscious that some banks could face trouble as rates rose meaningfully for the first time in years.“The industry’s lack of recent experience with rising and more volatile interest rates, coupled with material levels of market uncertainty, presents challenges for all banks,” Carl White, the senior vice president of the supervision, credit and learning division at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, wrote in a research note in November. That was true “regardless of size or complexity.”But it has been years since the central bank formally tested for a scenario of rising rates in big banks’ formal stress tests, which examine their expected health in the event of trouble. While smaller regional banks aren’t subject to those tests, the decision not to test for rate risk is evidence of a broader reality: Everyone, policymakers included, spent years assuming that rates would not go back up.When borrowing costs are very low, people and businesses need to take on more risk to earn money on their cash.John Taggart for The New York TimesIn their economic forecasts a year ago, even after months of accelerating inflation, Fed officials projected that interest rates would peak at 2.8 percent before falling back to 2.4 percent in the longer run.That owed to both recent experience and to the economy’s fundamentals: Inequality is high and the population is aging, two forces that mean there are lots of savings sloshing around the economy and looking for a safe place to park. Such forces tend to reduce interest rates.The pandemic’s downswing upended those forecasts, and it is not clear when rates will get back on the lower-for-longer track. While central bankers still anticipate that borrowing costs will hover around 2.5 percent in the long run, for now they have pledged to keep them high for a long time — until inflation is well on its way back down to 2 percent.Yet the fact that unexpectedly high interest rates are putting a squeeze on the financial system could complicate those plans. The Fed will release fresh economic forecasts alongside its rates decision next week, providing a snapshot of how its policymakers view the changing landscape.Central bankers had previously hinted that they might raise interest rates even higher than the roughly 5 percent that they had previously forecast this year as inflation shows staying power and the job market remains strong. Whether they will be able to stick with that plan in a world colored by financial upheaval is unclear. Officials may want to tread lightly at a time of uncertainty and the threat of financial chaos.“There’s sometimes this sense that the world works like engineering,” Skanda Amarnath, executive director of Employ America, said of the way central bankers think about monetary policy. “How the machine actually works is such a complex and fickle thing that you have to be paying attention.”And policymakers are likely to be attuned to other pockets of risk in the financial system as rates climb: Mr. Stein, for instance, had expected rate-related weakness to show up in bond funds and was surprised to see the pain surface in the banking system instead.“Whether it is stabler than we thought, or we just haven’t hit the air pocket yet, I don’t know,” he said.Joe Rennison More

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    U.S. Courts India as Technology Partner to Counter China

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    American and Indian officials are working toward new partnerships in defense technology, advanced telecom and semiconductors.Officials from the United States and India agreed on Tuesday to expand cooperation on advanced weaponry, supercomputing, semiconductors and other high-tech fields, as the Biden administration looks to strengthen its connections with Asian allies and offset China’s dominance of cutting-edge technologies.The agreements followed two days of high-level meetings in Washington between government officials and executives from dozens of companies, the first under a new dialogue about critical and emerging technologies that President Biden and India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, announced in Tokyo in May.Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, told reporters on Tuesday that the goal was for technological partnerships to be “the next big milestone” in the U.S.-Indian relationship after a 2016 agreement on nuclear power cooperation. He described the effort as a “big foundational piece of an overall strategy to put the entire democratic world in the Indo-Pacific in a position of strength.”The agreements will be a test of whether the Biden administration can realize its proposal for “friendshoring” by shifting the manufacturing of certain critical components to friendly countries. Biden officials have expressed concerns about the United States’ continued heavy reliance on China for semiconductors, telecommunications parts and other important goods. In recent months they have clamped down on the sale of advanced semiconductor technology to China, in an effort to stymie an industry that the White House says could give China a military advantage.Many companies have found it difficult to obtain the factory space and skilled workers they would need to move their supply chains out of China. India has a highly skilled work force and a government that wants to attract more international investment, but multinational companies seeking to operate there continue to complain of onerous regulations, inadequate infrastructure and other barriers.Our Coverage of the Investment WorldThe decline of the stock and bond markets this year has been painful, and it remains difficult to predict what is in store for the future.2023 Predictions: There are plenty of forecasts coming for where the S&P 500 will be at the end of the year. Should you be paying attention to them?May I Speak to a Human?: Younger investors who are navigating market volatility and trying to save for retirement are finding that digital investment platforms lack the personal touch.Tips for Investors: When you invest and where matters for taxes. But a few rules of thumb can stave off some nasty surprises.Both Mr. Biden and Mr. Modi are also propelling closer U.S.-Indian cooperation in efforts to build out the industrial and innovation bases of their countries, Mr. Sullivan said.The partnerships announced on Tuesday include an agreement between the U.S. and Indian national science agencies to cooperate on artificial intelligence and advanced wireless technology, as well as in other areas.The countries also pledged to speed up their efforts to jointly produce and develop certain defense technologies, including jet engines, artillery systems and armored infantry vehicles. The United States said it would look to quickly review a new proposal by General Electric to produce a jet engine with India.Officials also said they would work together to facilitate the build-out of an advanced mobile network in India and look for new cooperation in semiconductor production, including efforts to help India bolster chip research and production that would complement major investments in the industry in the United States.The new dialogue would include efforts to work through regulatory barriers, as well as visa restrictions that have prevented talented Indians from working in the United States, the countries said.But experts said India would need to continue to reform its permitting and tax system to lure more foreign manufacturing companies. And the United States would need to reform restrictions on transferring defense-related technology outside the country, they said, if it hopes to work with India to produce jet engines and other advanced weapons.Analysts also noted that many of the technology partnerships would hinge on new connections between the countries’ private sectors, meaning that the agreements could go only so far.India’s frequent purchases of Russian military equipment and close ties with Russia also present another wrinkle to the planned partnership. But Biden officials said they believed that the cooperation could accelerate India’s move away from Russia, to the benefit of its relationship with the United States.On Monday, Mr. Sullivan, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and India’s national security adviser, Ajit Doval, met with more than 40 company executives, university presidents and others, including executives from Lockheed Martin, Tata, Adani Defense and Aerospace, and Micron Technology.A semiconductor event last year in Bengaluru, India. A technology partnership “has the potential to take U.S.-India ties to the next level,” Tanvi Madan of the Brookings Institution said.Munsif VengattilReuters“It has the potential to take U.S.-India ties to the next level,” Tanvi Madan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said of the initiative. The trick, she added, will be “getting from potential and promises to outcomes.”“Many of the decisions to collaborate or not will be made in the private sector, and companies will be assessing the business case as much as, if not more than, the strategic case,” Ms. Madan said.India has traditionally been known as a difficult partner for the United States in trade negotiations. In the talks that the Biden administration is currently carrying out in Asia, known as the Indo-Pacific Economic Forum, India bowed out of the trade portion of the deal, though it has continued to negotiate in areas like clean energy, supply chains and labor standards.But analysts said the Indian government was far more motivated on national security matters, and particularly tempted by the prospects of working with the United States to cultivate cutting-edge tech industries.“We both have a common purpose here, which is the fear that China is going to eat our lunch in all the sectors unless we find areas to cooperate and collaborate,” said Richard M. Rossow, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. More

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    Wall St. Is Counting on a Debt Limit Trick That Could Entail Trouble

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    If the debt limit is breached, investors expect Treasury to put bond payments first. It’d be politically and practically fraught.Washington’s debt limit drama has Wall Street betting that the United States will employ a fallback option to ensure it can make good on payments to its lenders even if Congress doesn’t raise the nation’s borrowing limit before America runs out of cash.But that untested idea has significant flaws and has been ruled out by the Biden administration, which could make it less of a bulwark against disaster than many investors and politicians are counting on.Many on Wall Street believe that the Treasury Department, in order to avoid defaulting on U.S. debt, would “prioritize” payments on its bonds if it could no longer borrow funds to cover all its expenses. They expect that America’s lenders — the bondholders who own U.S. Treasury debt — would be first in line to receive interest and other payments, even if it meant delaying other obligations like government salaries or retirement benefits.Those assumptions are rooted in history. Records from 2011 and 2013 — the last time the U.S. tipped dangerously close to a debt limit crisis — suggested that officials at the Treasury had laid at least some groundwork to pay investors first, and that policymakers at the Federal Reserve assumed that such an approach was likely. Some Republicans in the House and Senate have painted prioritization as a fallback option that could make failure to raise the borrowing cap less of a disaster, arguing that as long as bondholders get paid, the U.S. will not experience a true default.But the Biden administration is not doing prioritization planning this time around because officials don’t think it would prevent an economic crisis and are unsure whether such a plan is even feasible. The White House has not asked Treasury to prepare for a scenario in which it pays back investors first, according to multiple officials. Janet L. Yellen, the Treasury secretary, has said such an approach would not avoid a debt “default” in the eyes of markets.“Treasury systems have all been built to pay all of our bills when they’re due and on time, and not to prioritize one form of spending over another,” Ms. Yellen told reporters this month.Perhaps more worrisome is that, even if the White House ultimately succumbed to pressure to prioritize payments, experts from both political parties who have studied the temporary fix say it might not be enough to avert a financial catastrophe.Senator Ted Cruz, center, and other Republicans during a news conference on debt ceiling on Capitol Hill last week.Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times“Prioritization is really default by another name,” said Brian Riedl, formerly chief economist to former Republican Senator Rob Portman and now an economist at the Manhattan Institute. “It’s not defaulting on the government’s debt, but it’s defaulting on its obligations.”Congress must periodically raise the nation’s debt ceiling to authorize the Treasury to borrow to cover America’s commitments. Raising the limit does not entail any new spending — it is more like paying a credit-card bill for spending the nation has already incurred — and it is often completed without incident. But Republicans have occasionally attempted to attach future spending cuts or other legislative goals to debt limit increases, plunging the United States into partisan brinkmanship.Understand the U.S. Debt CeilingCard 1 of 5What is the debt ceiling? More

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    America Set to Hit Its Borrowing Limit Today, Raising Economic Fears

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    The milestone will not immediately affect markets or growth, but it sets the stage for months of entrenched partisan warfare.WASHINGTON — The United States is expected to hit a congressionally imposed borrowing limit on Thursday, requiring the Treasury Department to engage in accounting maneuvers to ensure the federal government can keep paying its bills.The milestone of hitting the country’s $31.4 trillion debt cap is the product of decades of tax cuts and increased government spending by both Republicans and Democrats. But at a moment of heightened partisanship and divided government, it is also a warning of the entrenched partisan battles that are set to dominate Washington in the months to come, and that could end in economic shock.Newly empowered Republicans in the House have vowed that they will not raise the borrowing limit again unless President Biden agrees to steep cuts in federal spending. Mr. Biden has said he will not negotiate conditions for a debt-limit increase, arguing that lawmakers should lift the cap with no strings attached to cover spending that previous Congresses authorized.Treasury officials estimate the measures that they will begin employing on Thursday will enable the government to keep paying federal workers, Medicare providers, investors who hold U.S. debt and other recipients of federal dollars at least until early June. But economists warn that the nation risks a financial crisis and other immediate economic pain if lawmakers do not raise the limit before the Treasury Department exhausts its ability to buy more time.The episode has prompted fears in part because of the lessons both parties have taken from more than a decade of debt-limit fights. A bout of brinkmanship in 2011 between House Republicans and President Barack Obama nearly ended in the United States defaulting on its debt before Mr. Obama agreed to a set of caps on future spending increases in exchange for lifting the limit.Most Democrats have solidified in their position that negotiations over the debt limit only enhance the risks of economic calamity by encouraging Republicans to use it as leverage. That is particularly true of Mr. Biden, who successfully stared down Republicans and won an increase in 2021 with no stipulations.Newly elected Republicans, emboldened by anger among their base and conservative advocacy groups over failures in the past to exact concessions for raising the limit, have pledged not to let that happen again.Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen has dismissed ideas for lifting the borrowing cap unilaterally, such as minting a $1 trillion coin, as fanciful.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesIn reality, both parties have approved policies that fueled the growth in government borrowing. Republicans repeatedly passed tax cuts when they controlled the White House over the last 20 years. Democrats have expanded spending programs that have often not been fully offset by tax increases. Both parties have voted for large economic aid packages to help people and businesses endure the 2008 financial crisis and the 2020 pandemic recession.Federal spending declined from its pandemic high in 2022, reaching nearly $6 trillion in the fiscal year, or just under 24 percent of the economy. The federal budget deficit, which is the shortfall between what the United States spends and what it takes in through taxes and other revenue, topped $1 trillion for the year. That is a decline from the past two years as emergency pandemic spending expired, though the Biden administration predicts the deficit will rise again in the current fiscal year.Understand the U.S. Debt CeilingCard 1 of 4What is the debt ceiling? More