David Solomon, chairman and chief executive of Goldman Sachs, sat down with Sara Eisen at the G20 finance meetings in Asheville, North Carolina, for a conversation about the economy, the AI investment cycle, the bond market, financial regulation and what a shift in New York politics means for a firm headquartered there. This summary also carries the rest of the hour that the anchors and correspondents ran between the guest interviews — the Iran strikes and the oil market, the taped Treasury Secretary interview and the debrief on it, OpenAI's advertising business, and what Eisen said she is watching for the rest of the summit. The Eli Lilly, Jason Furman and Bob Pisani interviews are written up separately.
👤 Guest: David Solomon, chairman and chief executive of Goldman Sachs, in Asheville as one of the industry executives Treasury invited to the G20 meetings
🎙️ Hosts: Sara Eisen, reporting from the G20 in Asheville, and David Faber, at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange, who anchor CNBC's Squawk on the Street from the floor of the exchange
👥 Also on: Pippa Stevens and Kate Rooney, CNBC reporters covering energy and technology, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in a taped interview aired during the hour
📰 Published: 31 August 2026 on CNBC's Squawk on the Street podcast feed
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Key Takeaways
Earnings growth, not the consumer, is what makes his outlook constructive
"The thing I'd highlight that I know you've been focused on is the level of earnings growth has really been extraordinary."
The drags he named were the Middle East and trade policy, and he said neither had stopped the expansion
He will not claim every AI investment pays off, only that the aggregate produces a productivity boom
"I can't say that every investment will be worth it because of course, there'll always be winners and losers, some good investments, some bad investments."
The debt-financed build-out is being done by companies with the cash flow to carry it
Credit issuance is coming from very large companies redirecting earnings from other businesses into the cycle
"But we're watching it closely, and I'm not overly concerned at the moment."
Higher long-term yields are a fiscal story, and an intervention signals commitment rather than changing the level
"Markets are very, very efficient."
"But I'd also say, having a 5 percent term Treasury premium isn't a calamity."
There is no calamity moment, only an adjustment through growth or through spending
"We are either going to have to drive higher levels of economic growth consistently given our levels of spending and debt, or we're going to have to adjust our spending policy."
The Fed's policy rate and the term premium are not the same instrument
"I'd also say just to tie the two conversations together, short rates or Fed policy rate is not term Treasury premium."
Record issuance looks ordinary once it is divided by market capitalization
"In some ways, we've seen a lot of equity issuance, but if you go back and you look at equity issuance as a percentage of overall market cap, we look like we're running a 10-year average."
The regulatory risk he watches is an administration change, not the midterms
"The political winds around regulation will swing, but with some of these changes, some of that's now more embedded in the structure that we operate in, but that's something always to watch."
New York keeps the title of financial capital while the jobs go to Dallas and Salt Lake City
"Our headcount in New York is still a little less than 10,000, but it hasn't grown in the last 20 years."
His cautionary example was Detroit, the third-largest US city in the late 1960s
Diesel, not crude, is where the war premium is actually binding
Pippa Stevens said US refiners are running above 97% utilization and exporting record volumes
The Treasury Secretary's message shifted from the level of yields to the speed of the move
Eisen said he now says he was addressing the pace rather than trying to change the market's equilibrium
OpenAI's advertising business reached a $1 billion annualized run rate in under 200 days
Kate Rooney said it was $100 million as recently as March
Brent Above $90, an OpenAI Milestone and a Market Half a Percent Lower
Eisen opened from Asheville, where the G20 finance ministers and central bankers were meeting, with Faber at the New York Stock Exchange and Carl Quintanilla off. Faber ran the headlines.
The Iran escalation is what moved the tape. He described an escalation in the war with Iran, with the two sides exchanging strikes for the first time since July, and said Brent was above 90 dollars on renewed concern about supply disruption
Faber also flagged OpenAI's claim that its advertising business had reached a billion dollars of annualized revenue, a story the programme came back to at the end of the hour
The S&P 500 was down almost half a percent and the Nasdaq about the same, which he tied in part to the oil move
Eisen framed the Treasury's line on inflation before the first guest. She said the Treasury Secretary continues to describe the oil move as temporary — a supply shock the economy gets to the other side of — and to argue that core inflation looks good
Solomon's Outlook Is Constructive, and the Reason He Gives Is Earnings
Solomon said he appreciated that Treasury had invited a group of people from industry to the meetings, which he read as a genuine desire for a public-private partnership aimed at growth.
"My outlook for the US economy is pretty constructive." The consumer is still resilient, the economy is performing well, and an enormous investment cycle is contributing to growth and activity
The number he pointed to was corporate earnings. "The thing I'd highlight that I know you've been focused on is the level of earnings growth has really been extraordinary." — a tailwind, he said, for the market and for the economy
He named the drags without softening them. "Now, it's not a straight line. There are obviously bumps and headwinds from the situation in the Middle East. I think trade policy and tariffs is also a headwind to some degree."
The five- to ten-year view is a productivity argument. Taking a longer lens, he said AI being built into the economy and the enterprise — which he also said would not be a straight line — creates a real opportunity to run at a higher growth rate
Not Every AI Investment Pays Off, and He Declines to Pretend Otherwise
Eisen asked whether all the investment would be worth it.
"I can't say that every investment will be worth it because of course, there'll always be winners and losers, some good investments, some bad investments."
The claim he does make is about the aggregate. As AI is adopted by enterprises and by individuals, the direction of travel is "a productivity boom that I think is going to be extraordinary"
That, he said, gives the country a chance at a fundamentally higher growth rate if it is managed well
The Debt-Financed Build-Out: Big Balance Sheets Now, a Recalibration Later
Eisen asked whether companies borrowing to fund the build-out presents a credit risk.
The questions he says he asks are size and financing mix. "Well, over time, I think it's something to monitor. What is the size of the investment?" and how much of it is debt financed
The issuers are not marginal credits. A lot of the issuance is coming from very, very large companies with fundamentally strong underlying cash flow characteristics, choosing to take earnings from other businesses and invest them in the growth cycle
He expects an overshoot somewhere. "Are there going to be places where we probably go too far? Will there at some point be a recalibration?"
"But we're watching it closely, and I'm not overly concerned at the moment."
Higher Long-Term Yields Are a Fiscal Story; an Intervention Signals Commitment
Eisen asked about the recent Treasury intervention in the bond market and the yen intervention alongside it, and whether a more interventionist Treasury in financial markets is a good thing.
Solomon declined to grade it and reframed it as a long-run trend. These are actions Treasury takes from time to time, he said, and the thing to look at is the bigger context.
The trend predates the intervention. "The movement of Treasuries, of term Treasury premium higher, has been a long-term trend that's been driven by our fiscal spending policy, by an economy that's had more embedded inflation recently, and also by levels of higher growth."
What an intervention does buy is a signal. In the Japanese case, he said, it signals a commitment — "It's not that necessarily it changes the overall trajectory. Markets are very, very efficient."
"These are the biggest markets in the world, and they're going to move to their set levels."
Eisen put in that it is hard to fight that, and he agreed: "It's hard to fight that."
The level itself does not alarm him. "But I'd also say, having a 5 percent term Treasury premium isn't a calamity." With any historical context, he said, term premiums can be higher
There Is No Calamity Moment — Only an Adjustment Through Growth or Spending
Asked when it becomes a calamity, Solomon said the question assumes a break that he does not think happens.
"I think the chance of it becoming a calamity, I don't think it works that way. I think markets will adjust, our behavior will adjust, but we are going to have to adjust."
The adjustment has two forms and he named both. "We are either going to have to drive higher levels of economic growth consistently given our levels of spending and debt, or we're going to have to adjust our spending policy."
"I think the pressure on us over time will grow if we don't get that balance right."
On whether the Fed should be raising rates now, he refused to speculate. He said the Fed chairman had been very clear that he is an inflation hawk who will look at the data
He drew a line between the two instruments the conversation kept blurring. "I'd also say just to tie the two conversations together, short rates or Fed policy rate is not term Treasury premium." They are different things with different causes and effects
Eisen pressed for the bottom line on the long bond. "But you don't see any big problem with the 30 year 525, I guess is the bottom line." He answered "I don't see a big problem with that." and, asked whether it reflects fundamentals, "It reflects fundamentals, absolutely."
Issuance Looks Enormous Until You Divide It by Market Capitalization
Eisen noted how strong the capital markets have been — IPOs and deals, reflected in Goldman's own results — and asked whether it is sustainable through the rest of the year and into next.
"In the current environment, I think you're going to see continued strong issuance in the capital markets, sustainable."
The scaling argument is the one worth keeping. "In some ways, we've seen a lot of equity issuance, but if you go back and you look at equity issuance as a percentage of overall market cap, we look like we're running a 10-year average."
The numbers are big, he said, but the market cap and the economy have grown, and everything has to be put in that context
He disclaimed the short horizon and kept the long one. "I'm not very good at predicting what's going to happen in the next three, six, nine months, but I am good at kind of taking a longer-term lens and saying what's the direction of travel?"
What he thinks the United States has is a combination rather than a single advantage: technology innovation, the biggest and most important capital markets in the world, entrepreneurship and a lot of business creation
Regulation: the Balance Is Right, and the Risk Is an Administration Rather Than a Midterm
His test for financial regulation is a narrow one. Rules and guidelines matter, but in financial markets the regulation "should be focused on safety and soundness and it should try to strike the right balance"
He credits the current administration with striking it. "I think this administration has done a good job in allowing the capital markets to be freed up, the financial institutions to be freed up, to get capital into the system, to lend, because that lending drives growth and drives expansion, always with an eye towards safety and soundness."
The industry, he said, operated for a number of years with more headwinds in that area
Asked whether the midterms are a policy risk, he redirected the question. A set of regulatory actions around stress testing are in the process of being finalized, and once they go forward some of that becomes embedded in the structure the firm operates in
"The political winds around regulation will swing, but with some of these changes, some of that's now more embedded in the structure that we operate in, but that's something always to watch."
His point, he said, is that this is an administration change rather than a change in the leadership of Congress
He did not dismiss the four-year cycle risk. "I think that's absolutely a worry and something that we have to deal with." The swings in the political process can change how policy actions are implemented — "So people are policy, of course, you have to watch that."
New York Keeps the Title; Dallas and Salt Lake City Get the Jobs
Eisen asked how a firm at the heart of New York capitalism navigates a moment when so-called democratic socialists have momentum, noting that he had met the mayor of New York.
He treated it as ordinary politics. "Well, it's a reality of the political process. People have different ideas, they're free to voice those ideas." Whether those ideas play on a national stage, he said, is not something the country has seen yet
"New York is the financial capital of the world." He expects that to continue in the near future — "but also people adjust and adapt over time"
The headcount number is the evidence he brought. "Our headcount in New York is still a little less than 10,000, but it hasn't grown in the last 20 years."
"It has not grown in the last 20 years, but we've grown our headcount in the United States significantly in the last 20 years, but we've grown it in places like Dallas and Salt Lake City."
The drivers he named were talent availability, policy, taxes and environment: over time "those things create frictions, and companies and enterprises adapt and adjust"
The pull factor he says New York still has is age. "It's still a place where young people really come, and we hire a lot of young people. Goldman Sachs is a young firm, and so it's a very attractive talent center for young people."
The warning came with a city attached. "But if the policy isn't sustainably right over the medium and the longer term, it will have an effect."
"Detroit was the third largest city in the United States with I think 1.7 million people in the late 1960s. I think it has 500,000 or 600,000 people today. So these things can shift over periods of time."
"New York, I think, has certain protections, but it's something to watch."
Oil Above $90: War-Risk Insurance Repriced, and Diesel Is the Real Squeeze
Faber went to Pippa Stevens after the strikes on Iran. Her report was about the refined product rather than the crude.
Brent is back above 90 after the first strikes between the US and Iran in a month, with the market watching for another round and for what it does to flows through the Strait of Hormuz
The insurance market has repriced violently. "Now, Marcus Baker from insurance broker Marsh telling me insurance rates are now between 10 percent and 15 percent."
"That's up from between 0.125 and 0.25 percent prior to the war, and he expects those to go even higher."
Oil is still moving; other cargoes are not. Ship-to-ship transfers are getting some crude out, and "Now estimates vary widely, but Goldman on the high side saying they believe a bit over two thirds of pre-war flows are now getting through."
"LNG, for instance, is not really getting through, which is why European prices are up more than 6% on the day, at the highest level in more than three years, and currently trading more than eight times above US prices."
Product tankers are transiting at a lower rate than the very large crude carriers, she said, because they are smaller ships and the insurance cost per cargo is higher
Russia extending its diesel export ban is the second squeeze. It is the world's second-largest diesel exporter, and with the Strait volumes also gone, Stevens said there is nowhere else for the world to turn
US refiners have no slack left. "The US has really come to the rescue, but we are now at above 97% utilization rate on our refiners, meaning there isn't much wiggle room. We can't make more diesel."
The demand calendar makes it worse: southern-hemisphere planting, northern-hemisphere harvest and the heating-oil season
"You need the refined product, and that is really where the tightness is right now, with Ukraine now targeting more than 90% of Russia's refining capacity."
Heating oil futures were up more than 3% on the day
Bessent on Tape: the Best-Performing Bond Market, and What Druckenmiller Lost
The programme played Eisen's interview with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, recorded in the previous hour at the same meetings. He and Fed Chairman Warsh had traveled to Asheville on the same plane, and she said they are on the same page on bonds.
His argument was comparative rather than absolute. "We both believe that the bond market is the most resilient in the world."
"The 30-year, the yield is down. The 10-year, the yield is flat. No other major bond market can say that."
He said the 10-year yield is flat since the president came in, and that Fitch had reaffirmed the US rating two weeks earlier — "That was an inconvenient truth, so it didn't get any publicity."
"So, and if there were a problem in the US bond market, Sara, then people would be selling US bonds and buying other countries bonds. But we are the best performing market."
On Stanley Druckenmiller's op-ed against the buyback plans, he gave Eisen a detail she flagged as revealing. "Look, Stan's a great investor. He changes his mind a lot. And he doesn't like losing money."
"I think he lost money the day he sent in the editorial."
Eisen's read on what had changed since her last interview with him. He hit two things: that the US bond market has been outperforming, and that yields are flat since the president took over — in other words, she said, Treasury is not panicking about whether the US is still a safe haven
"The other point that he made, which was new today, I thought, was that he doesn't want to change the equilibrium necessarily in the bond market, but was just looking after the speed."
A week and a half ago, she said, he was concerned about summertime liquidity and about moves getting ahead of fundamentals
He also told her he has spoken to the Japanese and been assured they will make the moves needed to lift their currency — "So he sounded a lot calmer about both of those issues today."
Faber asked whether Treasury still thinks it can influence yields. Eisen said she thinks he accepts that if fundamentals say yields should be higher, that is what they will do, and that they are not necessarily going to fight it
"He said that he's going to announce with the OMB director this new fiscal plan."
She connected it back to the interview earlier in the hour: Solomon had also said the bond market reflects the fundamentals and the borrowing
Faber put the debt figures on the record. "Obviously, when we top 40 trillion in the national debt, that caught people's attention."
"We've added, I think, $700 billion to the national debt just in the last two months, Sara as well."
OpenAI's Ad Business Hits a $1 Billion Run Rate — and It Cuts Cursor Off
Kate Rooney reported the advertising numbers and the weekend's escalation with Elon Musk.
The growth rate is the story. "Annualized run rate for advertising revenue topped $1 billion for OpenAI. It does come less than 200 days after this business launched."
"It was $100 million back in March when they last disclosed numbers around this, up 10X or so in that time."
The company's own framing is pre-IPO diversification. Rooney said OpenAI calls the ramp evidence of a diversified business model that matters ahead of an IPO and against hundreds of billions of dollars of data center spending
The mechanism is a free, ad-supported tier. "Ads are now available, they say, in more than 40 countries." — with buying expanding across India, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, against a base of a billion weekly active ChatGPT users
It began as a controversial product and drew a competitor's Super Bowl campaign. OpenAI started testing ads in February and became the target of Anthropic's Super Bowl advertising
"OpenAI does say that ads are clearly labeled, has pushed back on the Anthropic view of all of this, and says that it doesn't influence ChatGPT's answers and that advertisers do not get access to private user conversation."
The Cursor cutoff is the other half. Over the weekend OpenAI cut off the coding startup's access to its models — "This is the coding startup that Elon Musk and SpaceX bought for about $60 billion."
"OpenAI citing concerns that Musk's company won't abide by their terms based on experience with Elon Musk's companies violating contracts."
Musk replied on X, and Rooney was careful to mark the quotation as his: he called Sam Altman utterly untrustworthy
The structural question underneath it. Rooney said it highlights the debate over whether AI providers can be neutral infrastructure while competing with the applications built on top of them
Faber doubted the compute logic would bridge the feud. He noted that SpaceX is now built almost as a hyperscaler, with Anthropic and Alphabet as customers, but said he finds it hard to imagine OpenAI being one
"I would say OpenAI has been desperately trying to get compute deals, I would say, though they probably would not partner with Musk, based on what we've seen in the animus between those CEOs."
What Eisen Is Watching for the Rest of the Summit
Faber asked for last thoughts from Asheville.
Who the Treasury Secretary meets is the tell. Eisen said CNBC reporter Megan Cassella, also on site, had said to watch who Bessent meets with, and that he confirmed in the interview he would meet his Canadian counterpart
On Canada, Eisen said he called out Prime Minister Mark Carney over the public shouting match around the trade issue, which she named as one of the areas of tension
He met the Chinese central banker, she said, because China is a large outstanding question in the economic pressure being applied to Iran
The message to Europe is the American growth model. She said the do-American-style-growth message — deregulation, more innovation — is in many ways aimed at the Europeans, and that their reaction is the thing to watch
Solomon's bottom line is that the level of long-term yields is the price of the country's fiscal choices rather than a market failure, that it is survivable at levels people are calling alarming, and that the adjustment will come either through consistently higher growth or through spending — with New York's own experience as the small-scale version of what happens when policy and cost pull a business somewhere else.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
Goldman Sachs (Solomon's firm: fewer than 10,000 people in New York, a headcount he says has not grown in 20 years, against significant US growth in Dallas and Salt Lake City)
OpenAI and ChatGPT (Advertising at a $1 billion annualized run rate less than 200 days after launch, monetizing a billion weekly active users through a free ad-supported tier)
Cursor (The coding startup cut off from OpenAI's models over the weekend, bought by Elon Musk and SpaceX for about $60 billion)
SpaceX (Now built almost as a hyperscaler, in Faber's description, with Anthropic and Alphabet as compute customers)
Anthropic (Ran the Super Bowl campaign attacking advertising in AI assistants, and is a SpaceX compute customer)
Alphabet, Google and Meta (The incumbents OpenAI's ad business is now competing with for digital ad dollars; Alphabet also named as a SpaceX compute customer)
Marsh (Insurance broker whose Marcus Baker gave Stevens the war-risk rates for shipping through the Strait of Hormuz)
Fitch Ratings (Reaffirmed the US rating two weeks earlier, which Bessent called an inconvenient truth that got no publicity)
Books & Resources Mentioned
Let the Bond Market Speak – Stanley Druckenmiller, in The Wall Street Journal (The op-ed against Treasury's expanded long-dated buybacks that Eisen put to Bessent, and that he answered by saying Druckenmiller lost money the day he sent it in)
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