Donald Trump last week gathered the greatest CEO minds in America for what was presumably a sumptuous dinner at the White House, where the president perhaps enjoyed his customary two scoops of ice cream for dessert while America’s business leaders made do with one. Among the heavyweights in attendance: Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase; Larry Fink of BlackRock; and David Solomon of Goldman Sachs.
As reported by New York Post columnist Charlie Gasparino, Trump waxed on about how well the economy was doing on his watch, predicting GDP growth of 6% fueled by tariffs he says will create more jobs, result in higher tax revenues, reduce the budget deficit, and lower costs even more.
Like the toadies that many CEOs surround themselves with, not one of them had the guts to tell America’s emperor he wasn’t wearing any clothes. Few at the dinner are as impressed with Trump’s economic leadership — or as sanguine about America’s growth prospects — as Trump himself.
“Trump has some smart economic advisers, but a lot of yes men who simply tell him what he wants to hear,” an unidentified source told Gasparino. “I hope he’s right about 6% economic growth because he will need it.”
Jamie, Larry, and David
My eyes bulged at this Gasparino detail: “The CEOs offered up their own solutions — mainly how to get average people buying more stocks. That could cover their retirement costs and make owning a home easier since stock returns, historically, have outpaced most other investments.”
The Three Stooges had Curly, Larry, and Moe. Wall Street has Jamie, Larry, and David. If Curly were still around and heard CEOs preaching that cash-strapped consumers should buy stocks to alleviate their financial worries, he’d have the perfect response: “Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk!”
Advocating that more Americans gamble in the stock market as an economic panacea underscores how clueless too many CEOs are about what millions of households are facing. Auto loan delinquencies are at record highs, most Americans can no longer afford a new car, and the CEO of McDonald’s admits his fast-food fare has become a luxury for Americans on the increasingly crowded lower rungs of the economic ladder.
The Fed reported in its latest survey that 37 percent of U.S. adults couldn’t even cover a $400 emergency expense with cash, savings, or a credit card.
Yet instead of urging people to save for emergencies, CEOs want them to funnel their limited funds into the stock market. CEOs obsess over the market because it’s their benchmark — and the only benchmark Trump uses to measure his success.
Wealth Disparity Index
Reality check: Roughly 90 percent of U.S. equities are owned by the wealthiest 10 percent of households. When Trump and the corporate media celebrate market highs, they’re celebrating a widening wealth gap that increasingly defines modern America.
The S&P 500 would be more aptly named “The Wealth Disparity Index.” America needs a relevant gauge for the lived economy — a “Hand-to-Mouth Index” measuring rent, groceries, cars, insurance, utilities, and the cost of staying afloat.
And let’s be clear: This isn’t a partisan indictment of Trump’s agenda. Wealth disparity has been widening for decades, including during Biden’s presidency, despite Biden’s working-class branding.
Under Biden, the average S&P 500 CEO last year earned 285 times what their median worker took home — up from 268 to 1 in 2023. Chief executives pocketed an average $1.4 million raise, bringing total compensation to $18.9 million, a seven percent jump.
The median worker? $49,500 — up three percent.
In 2023, median CEO pay jumped 12%, the fastest growth in 14 years. U.S. wage growth increased just 4.1%.
Heads in the CEO Clouds
The CEO class — across administrations and business cycles — has insulated itself from the economic reality most Americans face. It’s a closed ecosystem: executives flatter each other, emulate each other, and enrich each other sitting on one another’s boards while the country beneath them buckles.
Their greatest collective heist is stock buybacks, which this year have totaled $1 trillion— a corporate wealth-transfer machine that fattens executive compensation while starving workers, innovation, and long-term investment. It’s not strategy. It’s self-dealing on an industrial scale.
Public markets no longer serve the long-term interests of most Americans — and often not even of the companies themselves. Wall Street analysts view corporations through a quarterly keyhole, and CEOs obediently manage to that keyhole. Mass firings are warmly received, especially when they’re framed as sacrifices to the gods of artificial intelligence.
As Fortune’s veteran management authority Geoff Colvin astutely observed: “In the age of AI, CEOs quietly signal that layoffs are a badge of honor.”
Walmart’s CEO Defiance
To understand how warped this mindset is, consider Walmart’s Doug McMillon — literally a Harvard Business School case study in Wall Street’s myopia.
Under McMillon, Walmart added more than $576 billion in market value and delivered total returns north of 400 percent. Revenues now top $680 billion. And yet one of McMillon’s signature decisions was something Wall Street hated: giving frontline workers the biggest raise in company history. It worked — retention improved, stores stabilized, and high performers were promoted rather than poached.
Wall Street’s reaction? Predictable. Walmart shares plunged 10 percent in a single session, vaporizing $21.5 billion because McMillon dared invest in the people who make the place function.
The number of S&P 500 CEOs willing to defy Wall Street expectations and take big hits to their stock prices for the long-term good of their companies and employees is vanishingly small. Frankly, I can’t think of one.
The AI Bubble
Wall Street is no more disciplined or forward-looking than a teenager chasing crypto memes. The recent AI-stock wipeout proves it. Markets cratered for four straight sessions as investors abruptly pondered whether valuations had become too frothy. Roughly $2 trillion in wealth vanished in days.
Then Nvidia reported better-than-expected sales on Wednesday, and the stock soared 6.5 percent in after-hours trading.
People working two jobs can’t afford to survive that kind of whiplash.
Mamdani Wake-up Call
If I were part of the ruling CEO class, the election of Zohar Mamdani as New York City’s mayor would be keeping me up at night. Mamdani is dangerous on many levels — from his Marxist talk of “seizing the means of production” to his virulent antisemitism shared by his union supporters like the UAW and Starbucks Workers United.
Wealth disparity has toppled many nations, yet CEOs seem convinced they can continue enriching themselves while smacking their lips over the profits generated firing tens of thousands of workers. An idle mind is the devil’s playground — and young Americans increasingly can’t find work. No wonder Mamdani has such a strong youth following with promises of affordable housing, government-run supermarkets, and free bus service.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins
Meanwhile, the corporate media — especially network broadcast journalists — are too far removed from the economic reality most Americans face. Kaitlan Collins, who reportedly makes $3 million a year as CNN’s White House correspondent and host of a low-rated show, recently purchased a pricey Nantucket vacation home while her colleagues are reeling from job cuts and newsroom restructurings.
Collins is the poster child for the decline of network news — never having paid her dues. After graduating from University of Alabama, where she publicly called someone a “fag” and tweeted, “Idk (I don’t know) if I wanna room with a lesbian,” she landed at Tucker Carlson’s right wing Daily Caller. From there, she leapfrogged to the far-left CNN.
As for Collins’ lack of experience, Trump steamrolled her at a CNN town hall two years ago. That CNN still keeps Collins as its White House correspondent speaks volumes about the network’s poor leadership — and why it has forfeited its credibility as a news organization.