Fox News97%
This is the ‘BIGGEST RISK’ to the economy amid Iran conflict: BofA CEO 89%
4/17/2026, 10:01:36 AM
BS Summary: This video contains 31 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Authority, Hasty Generalization, and Availability Heuristic, with Appeal to Emotion as the most egregious example at 30.3% saturation with 327 hits. Analysis detected 3,729 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,078 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 82.7% and a BS Rank of 89% (1,945 of 16,813 videos). This video is worse (more manipulative) than 88.40% of the video peer group.
Well, joining us now to talk about the US economy in light of the Iran conflict is Bank of America chairman and CEO Brian Moahan. Brian, welcome back to Special Report.
>> Uh Brad, it's good to be here. I hope you're doing well.
>> Yes, sir. We are looking at the economy and you hear what the administration says, but you all obviously have a unique view as we've talked about many times where things sit. How do you see it?
>> Let me give you two views. won our research team which is one of the best in the world believes that the US economy will grow this year 26 about 2.1%. Now they brought that down about a half a percent uh due to the war in the in the prices of oil and gas and things like that but they did move it down but it's still a positive growth rate and they expect it then to grow a like amount or better next year. They say inflation will be a little higher just because of the uh prices coming through from not only oil and gas directly but also the products produced by oil and gas. Now that being said, when we look at at our customer base and what they did in the first quarter of 2026, they move the consumers spent 5% more money in the first quarter 26 than they spent last year's first quarter.
And if you look at what they spend it on, it was on things that are consistent with them being employed, earning more money.
And so they're doing very well.
And then their credit quality is very strong, too.
So that is a leading indicator of what looks ahead because consumer spending money means the US economy is in good shape.
And then we talked to our commercial customers.
They are all in pretty good shape. They're making money.
They're starting to benefit by the potential bonus depreciation for equipment they deploy.
>> To your point, you announced earnings on Wednesday and if you look at those numbers, um it seems like it's pretty healthy client activity and you see positive signs in this.
>> Yeah, we we made about $ 8.6 billion after tax, a good return on tangible common equity, 16%. But in there, you know, we're going to reflect our customers, which reflected good loan growth, good deposit growth, good capital markets activity, good consumer activity. And so, as of, you know, the first quarter, the American economy is in good shape, and our our experts predict it to stay in pretty good shape.
>> The IMF obviously came out and they, you know, had a prediction of severe scenario if the Iran war continues. Uh,
I want to flash back to when I had you on last year about this time about the state of the economy. The economy is in reasonable shape, but our economists have lowered their growth assumptions by 1% this year, one and a quarter and about a percent off of next year and basically have put in, you know, half a percent to percent growth, which is far different than they had, you know, two months ago, 3 months ago. And that's largely due to the uncertainty around how the tariffs will break. If it solves quickly, I think the US economy will be fine. So when you look back at that and the concern about tariffs, now you look now at the concern about the war in the Middle East, you know, how do you balance all of that, how it's panned out?
>> So from that time to uh prior to the uh beginning of the of the conflict in the Middle East, they had taken their economic uh uh growth rate projections for 26 up by a whole percentage point.
They've only brought a half a point of that back out. So they still are predicting faster than they would have predicted last year at this time. They had been low ones, now they're in the low twos.
And so that's constructive.
I think when they look ahead, there's an assumption that they think that the conflict resolves itself over the next several weeks.
There's a line lingering effect of prices uh because the uh uh clothing, the plastics, the aluminum, the inputs that come out and the restoration of the supply chain of oil and gas and repairing the facilities would take some time.
But the world is adjusted to $100 oil. The the biggest risk is if it goes on too long, will the availability of uh petroleum related products really be constrained?
And that's the one that they would say is more of a difficult one to predict.
>> We're going to follow it all. You know, we're getting ready for this big anniversary, the America 250. Uh your company, Bank of America, is doing a lot uh to commemorate this. Uh put up the list. You've you're doing a big gift, $5 million to the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library. You've got a partnership with the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery and an assessment and conservation of some 110 presidential portraits. uh stepping up, I guess, for uh the celebration.
>> Look, our job is to help America celebrate this wonderful anniversary.
And so, I know that uh President Roosevelt is near and dear to your heart. You wrote a nice book about him.
He was a unique individual. So, we're proud working with Governor Bergam when he was governor, now Secretary Bergam to help contribute to this museum.
And we've done a 5 million contribution to really help shore up the the ability back then to get the exam museum built and now to open it up on the Smithsonian, the president portraits.
We have found around the world that a lot of these museums don't have the money preserve these wonderful works of art, in this case, historical important works of art. And so there's 110 portraits that had never been touched that have to be cleaned up and restored or else they start to really deteriorate. And so uh we are proud to do that.
>> That's fantastic. Another thing that's near and dear to my heart is golf. And obviously [snorts] watch the Masters and saw your ad uh golf with us about these
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