Wall Street’s M&A Paradox

Jerome Powell
At a time when the investment banking business should be booming, many Wall Street executives are sitting on their hands, or twiddling their thumbs, wondering why they aren’t busier. Photo: Graeme Jennings-Pool/Getty Images
William D. Cohan
September 18, 2024

A strange thing seems to be happening on Wall Street these days. Yes, there have been a few modest corrections here and there, but the equity markets keep hitting new highs; the bond markets have been rallying for much of the past year; and the yield on the 10-year Treasury is around 3.6 percent, after being close to 5 percent a year ago. (Of course, whenever a bond’s yield goes down, its price goes up.) And then, earlier today, the Fed effectively lowered short-term interest rates by 50 basis points, an acknowledgment that post-pandemic inflation may finally be abating. (The markets jumped up, of course, after the Fed’s announcement.) Indeed, the U.S. economy remains one of the healthiest in the world—and, for reasons I do not understand, the Biden administration is not getting nearly enough credit for helping to engineer the “soft-landing” we are enjoying.