Moody's Ratings cut its credit rating on the United States by one notch on Friday, citing an increase in government debt and interest payment ratios.

Why it matters: The Moody's downgrade to Aa1 removes the U.S. government's last remaining triple-A credit rating, diminishing its status as the world's highest-quality sovereign borrower.

What they're saying: "This one-notch downgrade on our 21-notch rating scale reflects the increase over more than a decade in government debt and interest payment ratios to levels that are significantly higher than similarly rated sovereigns," Moody's said in the statement.

• "Successive US administrations and Congress have failed to agree on measures to reverse the trend of large annual fiscal deficits and growing interest costs."

Zoom in: Moody's cast doubt on whether current U.S. fiscal proposals will achieve material long-term reductions in mandatory spending and deficits.

• It said it expects deficits to rise over the next decade, driven by rising entitlement spending and little change to government revenue.

By the numbers: Moody's said it projects mandatory spending, including interest payment, to rise to around 78% of total U.S. spending by 2035, from about 73% this year.

• If the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is extended, which Moody's called its "base case," it expects around $4 trillion to be added to the federal fiscal primary deficit over the next decade.
• It sees federal deficits widening close to 9% of GDP by 2035, up from 6.4% in 2024, and the federal debt burden to hit around 134% of GDP by 2035, compared to 98% last year.

Between the lines: In noting its decision to assign a stable outlook on its rating, Moody's seemed to take a jab at recent actions and comments from the Trump administration, including the President's comments regarding Fed chair Jerome Powell.

• The ratings agency noted the U.S.'s "long history of very effective monetary policy led by an independent Federal Reserve."
• It also cited "institutional features" within the U.S. government structure, including "the constitutional separation of powers" among the three branches of government "that contributes to policy effectiveness over time and is relatively insensitive to events over a short period."
• "While these institutional arrangements can be tested at times, we expect them to remain strong and resilient," Moody's said.

For the record: "The Trump administration and Republicans are focused on fixing Biden's mess by slashing the waste, fraud, and abuse in government and passing The One, Big, Beautiful Bill to get our house back in order. If Moody's had any credibility, they would not have stayed silent as the fiscal disaster of the past four years unfolded," White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement.

Flashback: S&P Global Ratings removed its triple-A credit rating on the U.S. in 2011, while Fitch Ratings did the same in 2023.

Courtenay Brown contributed.

Editor's note: This story has been updated with White House reactions.

The new head of the U.S. securities regulator plans to modernize SEC rules and forms to better accommodate the registration of new crypto assets.

Why it matters: The digital asset industry has long sought a way to issue assets within U.S. regulations.

Driving the news: "I believe the commission has broad discretion under the Securities Acts to accommodate the crypto industry, and I intend to get that done," Securities and Exchange Commission chair Paul Atkins said in the keynote of an agency roundtable Monday.

• He called it the key priority for his tenure to develop a "rational regulatory framework" for crypto asset markets that establishes clear rules for the three areas of issuance, custody, and trading.

Between the lines: Issuance includes establishing a way for entities to raise money for digital-asset products. Custody and trading are part of the industry process to move blockchain assets around in a regulatorily approved way.

With issuance, Atkins said the commission would encourage registrations of crypto assets by both clarifying exemptions for non-securities and by establishing "clear and sensible" guidelines for distributions that are securities or "subject to an investment contract."

With custody, Atkins said he supports providing registrants with more options for how to hold onto assets on behalf of customers.

• He suggested the agency would review and clarify the types of entities approved as a "qualified custodians" under SEC rules, and provide exemptions from existing custody requirements to accommodate certain common practices within the industry.
• Case in point: He said advisors and funds should be able to engage in self custody under certain circumstances, suggesting that the existing framework for so-called special purpose broker-dealers should be amended.

With trading, Atkins said in favor of allowing registrants to trade a broader variety of products on their platform, including both securities and non-security assets.

The big picture: The SEC is looking to create clearer rules for crypto assets just as Congress is working on new laws to establish a broader crypto regulatory framework, and specific laws around stablecoins.

• "We have to be in sync with what they do," Atkins told reporters following the keynote. He doesn't, however, believe the SEC has to wait for Congress to act. "I think we have adequate authority under the securities laws to proceed," he noted, even absent passage of new laws.

What's next: Atkins stressed that official commission action is necessary to replace the existing patchwork of staff pronouncements and guidance

• "We ought to come up with rules that can stand the test of time."

President Trump rejected any blame for the stock markets's slide this year in a post Wednesday morning: "This is Biden's Stock Market, not Trump's. I didn't take over until January 20th," he wrote on Truth Social.

• But in January 2024, when the market was doing well, but he wasn't even president yet, he had a different take: "THIS IS THE TRUMP STOCK MARKET BECAUSE MY POLLS AGAINST BIDEN ARE SO GOOD THAT INVESTORS ARE PROJECTING THAT I WILL WIN, AND THAT WILL DRIVE THE MARKET UP."

Why it matters: It's typically tricky to tie a U.S. president's actions to stock market performance — equities move for all kinds of reasons –  but Trump's connection to the ups and downs of U.S. indexes this year is pretty clear cut.

Zoom in: After Trump was elected and into his inauguration, investors were giddy at the thought of a Republican administration that would relax regulation and lower taxes. Stocks rose.

• Tariff reality hit after "Liberation Day," when the president announced broad and high levies on imports from every country in the world. The S&P 500 declined sharply afterwards.
• Since then, the markets have seen historic volatility — rising and falling in connection with news coming out of the administration.

How it works: Stocks go up when it looks like tariffs will be eased, as in recent days.

• The market also fell after Trump suggested he'd fire Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, then rose last week when he backed off.

By the numbers: The S&P 500 is down 3.8% since just before the election, 6% for the year to-date — and nearly 10% since inauguration day.

• "On again, off again White House policy announcements have fueled volatility," writes Lisa Shalett, chief investment officer at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management.

In his post Wednesday, Trump said things would get better. "Tariffs will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers," he wrote.

• "Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden "Overhang." This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!!

Reality check: Biden left office with a fairly strong economy, though under the hood in late 2024 there were signs of weakening, as Axios' Neil Irwin wrote last month.

The bottom line: If investor faith in Trump was enough to usher in a "TRUMP STOCK MARKET" 15 months ago, then the declining faith of those same investors is what the "Trump stock market" is now, in April 2025.

Tesla shares cratered Monday on mounting fears of a sales slowdown, pushing the stock firmly below the starting level of its "Trump bump."

The big picture: It was a bad day for Elon Musk, whose messaging platform X was also disrupted by a "massive" cyberattack.

• While Tesla is facing plenty of challenges of its own, Musk's divisive role as President Trump's head of DOGE seems to increasingly be taking a toll on his business interests.

By the numbers: Tesla shares fell more than 15% Monday. They're now down more than 53% since their high on December 23, a loss of $700 billion in market value.

• The company is now more than 11% below where it closed the day Trump was elected.

Context: While stocks overall have taken a beating in recent weeks amid tariff threats, renewed inflation fears and concerns of slowing growth, Tesla's fall has been especially steep. It's suffered the biggest decline of any stock in the S&P 500 year-to-date, per FactSet.

What he's saying: Trump said on Truth Social early Monday that he is "going to buy a brand new Tesla tomorrow morning as a show of confidence and support for Elon Musk, a truly great American," though the president didn't say what kind of Tesla he planned to buy.

• "Why should he be punished for putting his tremendous skills to work in order to help MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN???" added Trump, in an apparent reference to his work with DOGE to overhaul the federal government and slash its workforce.

Driving the news: Two negative analyst comments spooked investors Monday: UBS analyst Joseph Spak wrote in a report that there were signs of Tesla's sales softening, and that sales declines were likely to impact both the company's first-quarter delivery targets and full-year-profit forecasts.

• Separately, Baird analyst Ben Kallo said on CNBC that demand for Tesla vehicles could be hurt by recent reports of vandalism reportedly linked to political backlash.
• This is all coming in context of a tech wipeout Monday amid widespread — and growing — recession fears, which drove the Nasdaq down 4% on the day.

Meanwhile, Musk on Monday was also dealing with what he called a "massive" and "coordinated" cyberattack on X, with tens of thousands of users reporting outages throughout the day.

What we're watching: While details of the attack, including a motivation, were not immediately known, many of social media were noting it in the same context as the Tesla demonstrations, implying a political motivation.

• Musk, responding to one such post, seemed to elevate the theory, writing on X: "We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources. Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved."
• Later, in a Fox Business interview, he said the attacks appeared to come from the area of Ukraine.

Go deeper: Musk quotes Monty Python to shrug off $16 billion loss

Editor's note: This article has been updated with comment from President Trump.

The Securities and Exchange Commission reversed a controversial accounting rule Thursday, which had helped deter banks from participating in crypto services.

Why it matters: The move to rescind the guidance, known as SAB 121, comes as Wall Street prepares to expand their digital asset businesses in light of a changing regulatory landscape under President Trump.

Catch up quick: The accounting rule, issued by the SEC in 2022, said that any bank that held digital assets on behalf of a customer, a service known as custody, should account for the assets as a liability on its own balance sheet.

• This made holding crypto costly for banks, especially those looking to custody large volumes of digital assets in order to provide other transactional crypto services for clients.
• Wall Street had opposed the rule, and a resolution to overturn it had actually passed both houses of Congress last year with bipartisan support, but was vetoed by President Biden.

What they're saying: "Bye, bye SAB 121! It's not been fun," SEC commissioner Hester Peirce wrote on X Thursday afternoon, citing the action that revoked it: SAB 122.

Zoom in: Peirce, known to the industry as "Crypto Mom," was tapped Tuesday to head a crypto task force at the SEC charged with putting the agency on what it called a "sensible regulatory path."

• The task force was announced by acting SEC chairman Mark Uyeda, just a day after Trump was sworn in and former SEC chair Gary Gensler stepped down.
• Veteran regulator Paul Atkins, also a favorite of the crypto community, has been nominated as the next chair and is awaiting Senate confirmation.

Go deeper:

• House crypto subcommittee chair wants to focus on fraud prevention
• Senate Banking Committee convenes its first digital assets subcommittee

The newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, will operate within the U.S. government, according to a fact sheet connected with an executive order expected Monday to establish the new entity, Semafor reported.

Why it matters: It was not known at this point how the new department, co-led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, would be structured to pursue its mission of cutting government spending.

Zoom in: "DOGE will work with the Office of Management and Budget and all agencies to shrink the federal workforce, federal spending, and federal regulatory burdens," the fact sheet said, as reported by Semafor.

• The executive order also reportedly directs every federal agency to establish its own "DOGE team."
• The group will "oversee a substantial reduction in the size and scope of government."
• An initial focus will be to modernize software systems within the federal government to "private-sector standards," per Semafor.

The latest: Ramaswamy is reported by multiple news outlets to be preparing to step away from the group to pursue a campaign for Ohio governor.

Friction point: DOGE is already facing court challenges.

• The American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing hundreds of thousands of federal employees, filed a lawsuit Monday along with two government watchdog groups, claiming that DOGE violates a 1972 law that requires any advice presented by advisory committees be objective and accessible to the public.

What they're saying: Despite the name, DOGE is not a department of the U.S. government, the group argues.

• The lawsuit claims that Trump has characterized DOGE's structure as a group providing "advice and guidance from outside of Government," and as such fails to meet the standards of a permitted advisory committee as established under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA).
• "This advisory committee led by Musk and Ramaswamy, who hold financial interests that will be directly affected by federal budgetary and regulatory policies, is beset both by conflicts of interest and the biased and extremist views of the libertarian billionaire class," said Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, one of the watchdog groups on the suit.

New York Mets owner and hedge-fund titan Steve Cohen just shocked the sports world, agreeing to pay outfielder Juan Soto $765 million to play baseball for him over the next 15 years.

Why it matters: The nearly 10-figure deal, the biggest contract in the history of pro sports, is huge for Juan Soto — but it might end up being a winner for Cohen too.

The big picture: Owning a professional sports team is a pretty awful way to make money.

• Cohen knows this first-hand. He's spent lavishly on player contracts in the four years since buying the Mets, pushing the business into the red in hopes of building a consistent winner. And it hasn't necessarily worked yet.
• But Juan Soto is not your typical player. At just 26 years old, he's one of the game's premier hitters, and arguably one of the most entertaining.

How it works: The average $51 million a year the Mets will pay Soto (potentially $55 million after five years), will likely be offset to a degree by the money he'll bring to the Mets, which pulled in just under $400 million in revenue in 2023, according to Forbes.

• That extra juice could come in the form of ticket sales, which were down 10% last year from 2023 (when the team reportedly generated $133 million at the gate) — and by the money those extra fans spent on parking ($15 million in 2023), as well as beer, hot dogs, lobster rolls and ballpark sushi ($17 million).
• If all that goes according to plan, the team will sell more advertising in the stadium ($49 million), too.
• "The Mets probably have more room to grow," a Major League Baseball executive told the New York Post, a reference to the indirect financial benefits Soto could bring compared to other teams.

Winning alone brings money too. A team could bring in an extra $50 million just from going to the World Series between the post-season ticket sales and nationally televised games, the Post notes.

• And if this happens, the franchise valuation will jump too.

The intrigue: Cohen is also trying to win support for an $8 billion casino project next to the Mets' Citi Field in Queens, New York, which could generate around $1.9 billion a year by some projections.

• If that planned "Metropolitan Park" were ever built, it likely wouldn't hurt business to have a thriving Mets franchise anchoring the northwest corner.

President-elect Trump on Wednesday said he would nominate former SEC commissioner Paul Atkins to be chairman of the regulator.

Why it matters: Atkins is a favorite of the crypto community, and his appointment signals an even deeper embrace by the coming administration.

Zoom in: Atkins served as a commissioner for the securities regulator from 2002 to 2008 under George W. Bush. (There are five commissioners, including the chair who heads the agency.)

• He's referred to as a pro-business conservative and has advocated for lighter regulation.
• A year after leaving the SEC as a commissioner, he founded a consultancy, Patomak Global Partners, described by Bloomberg as "one of the most prominent sounding boards for banks, trading firms, fintechs ... seeking guidance on how to influence and respond to Washington's edicts and investigations."

What they're saying: "Paul is a proven leader for common sense regulations," Trump said in a Truth Social post. "He believes in the promise of robust, innovative capital markets that are responsive to the needs of Investors, & that provide capital to make our Economy the best in the World."

The big picture: Atkins' nomination can be viewed as the second half of Trump's promise to the crypto industry for a friendlier Securities and Exchange Commission.

• Current chair Gary Gensler, who Trump threatened to "fire" in July, will step down on Inauguration Day. Gensler has led an aggressive tenure at the SEC marked by controversial rulemaking and a combative enforcement approach to the crypto industry.

Editor's note: This report has been updated with additional background information on Atkins.