2008 was a different time. Flo Rida’s “Low” was Billboard’s top song, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight was the highest-grossing movie, and a deregulated Wall Street was in meltdown. While the world is still flush with Batman content, Flo Rida hasn’t had a hit in a decade and Wall Street has had a couple of good years, even if it’s mired in a haze of tariff uncertainty at the moment.

But some parts of the “before time” may be making a comeback: The Financial Times, citing multiple sources, reported last week that the US is poised to slash capital requirements imposed on banks in the wake of the 2008 crash. The banking industry, unsurprisingly, was already quite optimistic about a potential change.

Treasure for the Treasury Market

The focal point is the so-called supplementary leverage ratio, a rule that requires banks to hold a certain percentage of their deposits in liquid assets. Introduced by the US in 2014 as part of the Basel III international banking regulations, it is intended to make sure lenders have enough cushion to cover their risks and endure financial shocks like the 2008 crisis.

The baseline ratio is 3%, but for big banks deemed systemically important (code for “too big to fail”), it’s 5%. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent essentially said changes are coming earlier this month, when he told Congress it was a “high priority” for the Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the three regulators that oversee the rule. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell also told lawmakers in February that reducing the SLR is something he expects to “get done.” The FT, meanwhile, reported that the ratio is now poised to be reduced in a matter of months, something Wall Street has argued would be a boon to the $29 trillion Treasury market:

• Bank lobbying groups have said the SLR prevents lenders from being more active intermediaries in the Treasury market. Powell signaled his agreement in February: “The amount of Treasurys has grown much faster than the intermediation capacity has grown, and one obvious thing to do is to lower, is to reduce the effective leverage ratio, the bindingness of it.”
• Bloomberg’s editorial board was skeptical of a change when Bessent floated it last month, calling it a “questionable idea” to “let banks load up on federal debt” at a time when “banks are overleveraged and Treasurys aren’t entirely safe.” In the latter case, it cited the shock waves that the Trump administration’s tariff policies have sent through bond markets.

The Bloomberg editorial board suggested the US could improve the standing of its sovereign debt by “making an effort to get government finances under control” and argued changing the SLR would merely weaken banks. To that point, Moody’s downgraded US sovereign debt on Friday, citing the federal debt and deficits — it was the last major credit rating agency to maintain a top rating for the US.

An Alternate Approach: Rather than cutting the SLR, regulators have considered excluding Treasurys and other assets deemed low risk from the calculation — something that was temporarily enacted during the pandemic. The FT noted that Autonomous Research estimated reviving the exemption would free up $2 trillion of balance sheet capacity for the big US banks.

Sometimes misery doesn’t just love company but may also require it.

Charter Communications, America’s second-largest publicly traded cable operator, and privately held cable giant Cox Communications announced Friday that they have agreed to join forces. Charter will purchase its competitor from the Cox family in a $21.9 billion deal in hopes of gaining the heft to better compete in an increasingly challenging market.

Moat Overrun

Charter CEO Chris Winfrey said on a conference call that the combined company’s network will reach 46 states and be available to roughly 70 million households and businesses — that would leapfrog Comcast, which reaches 64 million homes and businesses, according to its website.

After a contentious 2009 bankruptcy that left many creditors unhappy, Charter pursued mergers to build an economic moat in the struggling TV business, which left it nipping at the heels of Comcast. In 2013, it bought $1.6 billion in assets from now defunct Cablevision and, in 2016, was given the regulatory go-ahead on a $78 billion purchase of Time Warner Cable and a $10.4 billion acquisition of Bright House Networks. In recent years, however, the industry’s struggles have spread beyond declining cable subscriptions and cord-cutters opting for streaming services:

• Charter and rivals grew their subscriber ranks by millions offering cable internet, but that business line has been disrupted by a wave of new competition from outside the traditional cable business. Mobile carriers, like T-Mobile and Verizon, have added millions of wireless customers now that 5G mobile technology allows them to offer internet speeds comparable to cable, often for less.
• At the end of the first quarter, Charter had 30 million broadband customers, a decrease of 60,000 from the previous three-month period; it also shed 181,000 cable TV customers, bringing its total to 12.7 million. Comcast reported losing 199,000 broadband customers in the first quarter, an acceleration from the 139,000 it lost in the final quarter of 2024. T-Mobile, by contrast, added 424,000 high-speed internet customers in the first quarter.

Limbo Lifted: Verizon has been involved in a major telecommunications deal of its own, having proposed to buy Frontier Communications for $20 billion last year. The transaction was stuck in limbo, however, when Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr launched a probe into Verizon’s diversity, equity and inclusion practices, which the Trump administration has discouraged in corporate America. Verizon agreed to end its DEI policies last week and, on Friday, the FCC approved its Frontier acquisition.

If the customs line coming into the US seems extra short lately, it’s not just you. International travelers are expected to spend $12.5 billion less on trips to the US this year, according to the latest World Travel and Tourism Council report. The US is the only country out of the 184 in the report that’s on track to see spending on foreign travel fall.

The report says travel to the US dipped last year mainly because the dollar was so strong that tourists felt like they could get more bang for their buck elsewhere (shopping spree in Ginza, anyone?).

But this year’s a different story. Foreign travelers aren’t feeling very “Party in the USA” amid Trump administration policies that include steep tariffs and a crackdown on illegal immigration.

Skipping Montauk for Mallorca

The US is still the world’s biggest market for tourism and travel, but it’s becoming increasingly dependent on Americans vacationing within the states rather than visitors coming from abroad. Last year, more than 90% of the US tourism industry’s dollars were domestically generated.

That means the US is missing out on the significant spending power of wealthy global jetsetters, who spend an average of $4,000 per trip — eight times more than American travelers.

At the same time, airlines say domestic travel is weakening as Americans move past their post-pandemic revenge-travel phase (“Hot Girl Summer,” we hardly knew ye):

• American Airlines, Delta, and Southwest have all pulled their full-year earnings guidance after seeing softening spending in the states.
• Delta’s CEO said that safety concerns are also keeping some Americans at home. In February, a Delta plane flipped while landing in a non-fatal crash in Canada and in January, an American Airlines regional jet collided with an Army helicopter in Washington, DC, killing everyone aboard. In the most recent incident contributing to flyers’ anxiety, Newark air traffic controllers briefly lost their radar signal this month for the second time.

Superpremium to The Rescue: While economic uncertainty has made budget tourists rethink their vacations, first-class splurges may still offset any losses from coach. United is upgrading its international business class suites to include caviar service and luxe pajamas, while Delta’s first-class cabin will get Shake Shack and sommeliers. The high seas are seeing increased interest in ultra-primo options, too: Royal Caribbean raised its annual forecast last month after bookings for its higher-end cruise itineraries rose. And while the travel sector creates more attractive, and expensive, options for people to splurge on, summer travel still has time to pick up. Uncertainty could mean travelers are booking trips closer to their departure dates, similar to how they acted during the pandemic.