August 5, 2026
WHEN: Today, Wednesday, August 5, 2026
WHERE: CNBC’s “Squawk Box”
Following are excerpts from the unofficial transcript of a CNBC exclusive interview with Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” (M-F, 6AM-9AM ET) today, Wednesday, August 5. Following is a link to video on CNBC.com: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2026/08/05/bank-of-america-ceo-on-the-consumer-starting-to-see-more-convergence-in-spending-patterns.html.
All references must be sourced to CNBC.
MOYNIHAN ON SITUATIONAL AWARENESS
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: Let me ask you a question on the other side of that, which is Situational Awareness. They were a client of your firm. You lent to them. I think we're all still trying to grapple with the aftermath of that. What happened? Has anything changed in terms of your lending standards to hedge funds and other firms in the aftermath of this?
BRIAN MOYNIHAN: So one, two things. One, I think things changed as people saw this move, and there's a natural adjustment period. I think anytime one of these happens and we're fine, etc., etc. You always look and say, okay, what happened? Should we learn from it? Should it change? And so the tendency is to tighten the underwriting standards, just a hair, to adjust, especially with big run-ups in stocks. So we'll see what happens next. But, but it's these are all warning shots of as Joe was talking about, as valuations get out, leveraging system gets there. You have to be careful, and we run a great shop. And so, you know—
SORKIN: Had Ken Griffin not come in, though, I mean, how how damaging would have that been?
MOYNIHAN: I think we'd have been fine.
SORKIN: You think—
MOYNIHAN: Based on based on the standards that we lend on, and that's that's, but it's but the reality is, is that you have to be you have to go learn from every lesson of the past, and so the natural instinct of everybody that participates is wait a second, let's go back and look, and that has a tendency to push down a little bit.
MOYNIHAN ON GLP-1 EMPLOYEE SPENDING
MOYNIHAN: So, so if you think about our company, we're self-insured. We spend $2 billion plus on health care a year. We spend about 250 million or more on GLPs, and that's up from zero. Think about it, four or five years.
MOYNIHAN ON CONSUMERS
MOYNIHAN: In the month of July, we just got the final sort of payments report. The consumers of Bank of America put 5% more in the economy, and what you've been seeing in June and July is that the if you do a third, a third, third, high income, medium income, low income, the lower income people's wages grow a little faster. And they're spending a little bit more, and so you're starting to see more convergence in the spending patterns. That's very good.
MOYNIHAN ON AFFORDABILITY CRISIS
MOYNIHAN: I think we have an affordability crisis because people believe there's an affordability crisis, which will shape their behavior if it doesn't come into line. That's largely around housing and rent costs, which are still rising, but rising to less fast rate. It's around insurance costs, which actually came back in line, it's around food costs and gas cost, and so if if if a deal gets worked out and gas prices come back down, that takes away one of the concerns. But it's a real issue.
MOYNIHAN ON IRAN DEAL
MOYNIHAN: Well, I think there's been ups and downs on this, and you see a range of oil prices, probably from 60, 60, 70, to 100 and well, that seems like a huge range. The actual impact of that has been felt by the economy before. The question is, it’s, if it's people believe it's temporary, they change their behavior, think it's going to come back down. So that uncertainty is still in people's minds until they see a deal get struck and hold.
MOYNIHAN ON FED RATE OUTLOOK
MOYNIHAN: Our team thinks inflation reaches the mid twos by the end of next year, ‘27, and then gets into the target range that you've heard them talk about. They think the Fed will raise rates three times in September, October, December meeting this year. That's a little bit more than the thing. And they're a smart research team. They think this through, but they really are saying that the labor market's in very good condition, and so you have to work on the inflation side and make sure that it keeps going down.
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Stephanie Hirlemann
CNBC
