President Donald Trump hosted a private conference call Tuesday morning with several billionaire Wall Street and hedge fund titans just hours before the president said he hopes to “have the country opened up” and “get people back to work” by Easter—even as the coronavirus pandemic worsens.
Among the most prominent executives on the call—which was joined by Vice President Mike Pence—were Ken Griffin, billionaire CEO of Citadel; Stephen Schwarzman, billionaire CEO of the Blackstone Group; and Paul Tudor Jones, billionaire co-founder of Just Capital. The firms represented on the Tuesday morning call collectively manage hundreds of billions of dollars in assets.
The conversation came as Senate lawmakers and White House negotiators, led by Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs executive Steve Mnuchin, were in the middle of talks over a $2 trillion economic stimulus package that includes $500 billion in taxpayer bailout funds for large corporations—and, though not widely reported, trillions more in a lending program backed by the Federal Reserve. Continue reading.