Consumer Resilience and AI Investment (with Danny Burger)

3/19/2026 6:22:02 PM	short term cautious down	5 days later	+1.11%	-0.55%
10/28/2025 3:42:05 PM	long term up	61 days later	-2.28%	-2.28%
9/3/2025 5:31:38 PM	short term up	5 days later	+0.88%	+0.88%

Consumer spending on credit and debt is up 6% year-over-year, yet gasoline prices are high and consumer confidence is at rock bottom.

Danny Burger

Brian Moynihan

The consumer is resilient because unemployment is at 4.3% and job formation, while not as strong as theoretical numbers, is still strong at 60-70,000 jobs per month. Incomes are growing across all segments.

About $2 trillion flows from consumers into the economy annually, growing at 5%. Entertainment spending is up 13% year-over-year in May. Gas spending is up 20%, but consumers are adjusting by going to cheaper stations and rationing. The economy will grow at 2.1% this year.

There are concerns about unseen stress in the banking system, with lower-income consumers turning to payday loans and shadow banking.

Danny Burger

Brian Moynihan

Bank of America doesn't do subprime credit and our credit is as good as it's been in 50 years. Delinquencies are fine right now, and it all comes down to employment.

We offer affordable products like a no-overdraft account, $5/month account, and $500 loan with no interest. Our overdraft fees are $10 vs market of $35. We're a prime lender, so we see less stress.

AI is impacting capital markets significantly, with Bank of America involved in blockbuster IPOs and Alphabet raising equity from $80 to $85 billion.

Danny Burger

Brian Moynihan

The market has absorbed AI-related capital smoothly so far. The debate will be whether revenue and earnings multiples come into sync with the massive capacity building.

Bank of America is a big buyer of these services, spending $13 billion annually on technology, with $350 million this year on AI-related spending. The question is affordability and whether the revenue/growth will exceed the costs.

Bank of America announced 14,000 employees will be reorganized/re-skilled thanks to AI, not let go.

Danny Burger

Brian Moynihan

We're repositioning people through internal skills training. With 8% annual attrition (16,000 people), we have a choice to hire replacements or not. We're hiring 2,000 summer interns, 2,000 permanent hires, 8,000 community college kids, and 10,000 veterans over five years.

The 14,000 people moved from one job to another through skills training. In technology, people moved from coding system X to system Y using new techniques. We're moving mass amounts of people around.

AI is really expensive. Have you started to think about the inference cost?

Danny Burger

Brian Moynihan

At our scale, the number isn't that big yet. We have $70 billion in expenses. The specific applications are costly but paying for themselves. We wouldn't do it unless we saw the business outcome.

We have 200,000 people using AI for general usage. We're measurably putting in 100 projects with another thousand being looked at, always gating them on whether they produce revenue or cost savings.

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