Following are excerpts from the unofficial transcript of a CNBC interview with Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) Chair & CEO Brian Moynihan on CNBC’s “Power Lunch” (M-F, 2PM-3PM ET) today, Tuesday, July 18.
Bank of America CEO On Strong Q2 Earnings, Health Of The Consumer And Outlook
Moynihan On Possibility Of Slight Reccesion
BRIAN MOYNIHAN: Our research team which is terrific still has us having a slight recession in the early part of ’24. But they have moved that out again, reduced to two quarters not three and lessened the depths to soft landing more or less.
MOYNIHAN: We feel that if the stability continues to hold in the market, you’ll see that activity come in as you move out of the summer and into the fall and that’s important because that capital formation is what will lessen the probability of recession out in the future because that capital formation, capital spending is part of the drill that makes America great.
Moynihan On Inflation Being Under Control
MOYNIHAN: Inflation is getting under control. You saw that in the spending numbers today that you see that in some of the inflation numbers over the last few weeks. And that’s good because in the end of the day, it would be great if we could get this inflation taped and still have this kind of unemployment at 3.7% or whatever the unemployment rate is.
Moynihan On Consumer Activity And Spending
MOYNIHAN: Consumers are spending. They’re employed, they’re earning more money and they have a lot of money in their accounts leftover. The question is, if times get tougher, will they, will there be less employment, more unemployment, will there be more layoffs and things like that.
MOYNIHAN: From a credit cost standpoint, you’re seeing the activities of consumers move back to where they were. But everybody talks about we’re normalized into 2019 pre-pandemic, people have to realize for our company, the pre- the 2019 charge-off rate was probably a 40 or 50-year low and so we were at levels of very low credit risk, very low credit costs and we were doing a billion dollars a provision a quarter back then, you know, and we’re doing a little bit more than that now, etc. given the recession predicted ahead of us.
