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The Best Wall Street Deals of 2021

Notes on the next fiscal crisis, Gorman’s return-to-office pivot, meme SPAC mania, and a ‘Succession’ shout-out.

Each week, I receive feedback from readers and sources about Wall Street’s biggest characters and concerns. I’ll be engaging with some of those questions here—in addition to a few observations of my own.

Bill, it now seems certain that Biden's BBB agenda won’t pass till next year. How is Wall Street evaluating the Biden agenda, and Biden, himself?

This is probably an unpopular take, but Wall Street likes gridlock and that’s basically what we have in Washington yet again. We had gridlock for the last six years of the Obama presidency and for most of the Trump presidency, and now again for the last six months of the first year of the Biden presidency. Gridlock means that for any momentous legislation to pass there has to be somewhere between 50 and 60 votes in the Senate and that is very hard to come by these days. So we really have to sweat the big pieces of legislation before they pass and before they can become law. That’s one way to stop the spiraling national debt and budget deficits from further unbounded expansion, since Congress lacks the spine to do so. 

As for why Joe Manchin persists in opposing his president’s key legislative initiative—the Build Back Better program—I wouldn’t dare hazard a guess, but I’d bet it has more to do with his own re-election concerns in very-red West Virginia than it does with trying to do the right thing for the country. And that is yet another sad indicator of how far into the abyss our political process has fallen.

As far as Biden himself, I hear a lot of complaints on Wall Street about him these days. An increasing number of Wall Streeters are starting to question his competence, his health (despite his recent clean bill) and his judgment, with most of that scrutiny related to the Afghanistan fiasco. (Personally, I think the criticisms are unfair.) But by and large, a growing disappointment with Biden does not mean, in the slightest, that Wall Street is hoping for a return of The Donald. Sorry old pal, you are still persona non grata on Wall Street. What Wall Street really wants is some new voices and new leadership that bring to the country a whole new way of thinking and acting. Who knows where these people are, or where they are hiding, but in a country with a population of 330 million, there ought to be a visionary woman out there somewhere ready to lead this amazing, but deeply troubled, country forward.

The big banks are again pivoting on remote work amid another covid wave. James Gorman said he was "wrong" about asking employees back to the office; JPMorgan told employees they can work from home for the next two weeks; ditto Citigroup and Jeffries. You’re an advocate of getting back to the office, yourself—do you predict Wall Street’s hustle culture will survive the pandemic, or will old-school guys like Gorman ultimately settle for a more itinerant workforce?

Well, this pivot isn’t about retreating from the idea of the importance of learning and mentoring on Wall Street. Rather it’s a well-meaning reaction to the resurgence of the Covid virus as we head into the holidays. In and around New York City it feels like March 2020 all over again, where people are canceling get-togethers, events and parties with wild abandon and companies have rescinded their return-to-work mandates...

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