A tariff-induced meltdown of U.S. equity and bond markets has been spooking financial circles. But stocks and Treasuries aren’t the only assets on the fritz—the U.S. dollar is also falling, with analysts warning of a global “de-dollarization” in response to the Trump administration’s frenetic foreign policy decisions.

“We are witnessing a simultaneous collapse in the price of all U.S. assets including equities, the dollar versus alternative reserve [foreign exchange] and the bond market,” writes George Saravelos, global head of FX research at Deutsche Bank, in a note this week. “We are entering unchart[ed] territory in the global financial system.”

Even as markets tank and bond yields rise, the dollar is down to a three-year low this week. In a more typical environment, markets would be “hoarding” dollars as a safe haven from the other noise, says Saravelos, and the dollar would be strengthening. But what Trump has unleashed on global markets is far from typical. Now, other countries are losing faith in the U.S. and actively selling down U.S. assets, possibly upending the dollar’s global reserve status.

This is a problem, as the U.S. dollar’s exceptionalism is subsidized by other countries: foreigners invest nearly $2 trillion in the U.S. every year. Foreign investors, both individuals and governments, own 30% of U.S. debt. Seeing them heading for the exits is a cause for major concern, not least because it could lead to increased borrowing costs for the U.S. at a time when the national debt is ballooning.

Analysts would be less worried about the recent volatility if the U.S. government was committed to keeping the dollar’s reserve status. But Stephen Miran, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, gave a speech this week in which he said the primacy of USD is “costly,” alleging it makes U.S. labor and products uncompetitive.

So where does that leave investors? Some are looking for reassurance in assets like gold, German bunds, Swiss francs, and the Japanese yen, says Gary Schlossberg, global strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute.

But it isn’t time to give up all faith in the USD, he says—market collapse isn’t imminent. The current erosion in its strength can still be reversed. Because although considerable damage has been done over the past few months, the pillars of U.S. exceptionalism are still in place: the U.S. market is still deeper, more liquid, more developed, and more efficient than any other. Though some have positioned the euro as a possible alternative, Europe is far more fragmented than the U.S., and faces risks of disintegration.

“Certainly there is a withdrawal from the U.S.,” says Schlossberg, noting that it’s a reflection of the deep unease within markets. But “the dollar is going to remain the centerpiece. There are so few alternatives out there.”

Global confidence in the U.S. is shaken

That said, Schlossberg and other analysts have noted that the current market environment is substantially different from previous shocks. Take the 2011 credit downgrade of U.S. Treasury debt. At that time, investors looked through it, and still considered the dollar a stable safe haven, preventing a roll over of the market. During the 2008 financial crisis, governments came together to right the ship.

But the Trump administration’s tariff policies and intention to silo U.S. manufacturing from other countries is a different beast, upending decades of agreed-upon rules and threatening the U.S.’s role as the world’s de facto leader. The ramifications are likely to be longer-term.

“You’re talking about basically removing, by degree, the U.S. from the global economy,” Schlossberg says. “I don’t mean to suggest that we’re on the verge of a collapse in the trade and payment system that goes back to World War II, but it just creates uncertainty.”

Creating even more uncertainty is how fluid Trump’s policies have been. Within just a few weeks, he has implemented tariffs, changed them multiple times, and now frozen some of them, although the blanket 10% tariff on most countries and 145% tariff on China is currently in place. As all of this has done been by executive order—and not codified by Congress into law, though tariffs are its purview—they can easily be rescinded or replaced, as Trump himself has already done. All of this is eroding trust in the U.S., which will be hard to undo even if all of the policies were reversed. The big winners from all of this are the euro and the yen, analysts say.

Schlossberg says jittery investors should talk through their feelings with a financial advisor, and get their read on how they view the market environment changing. But for now at least, the fundamentals remain: diversify your holdings to include both U.S. and international exposure, consider gold as a safe haven, and consider upping your cash allocation for the time being. Don’t get “too over your skis” trying to find alternatives in a rapidly changing environment.

“Optimistically you can say, this too shall past, the turbulence that’s been created. It’s not Armageddon tomorrow,” says Schlossberg. “I mean, this may reverse on Monday.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

In today’s era of constant disruption, shifting markets, and unrelenting demand for innovation,  one of the most powerful tools in a CEO’s arsenal is the ability to make the complex clear, the tangled streamlined, and the burdensome efficient. 

As organizations scale, complexity is inevitable. New products, platforms, policies, metrics, and workflows are layered on, each intended to solve a problem or drive growth. But over time, these additions compound and can create organizational drag that stifles innovation, slows decision-making, and erodes financial performance and employee engagement. According to Bain & Company, excessive complexity—defined as an overabundance of layers, processes, titles, and approvals that dilute focus and distance leadership from the customer—costs large firms more than 15% of their annual profits. For Fortune 500 firms, that can translate into billions lost. It also fuels confusion on the front lines: In a 2023 McKinsey survey, 40% of respondents cited lack of clarity as the primary cause of inefficiency in their organizations.

Addressing this challenge requires more than trimming bureaucracy—it requires a systemic understanding of complexity across every level of the organization. “You cannot respond intelligently to complexity if you don’t understand what groups or what individual teams are doing,” says Christine Barton, head of BCG’s North America CEO Advisory. Both macro and micro insights are essential.

Recently, CEOs like JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon, Bayer’s Bill Anderson, and Amazon’s Andy Jassy have spoken about their efforts to eliminate bureaucracy, simplify operations, and build organizations rooted in clarity, speed, and discipline.

In Dimon’s most recent shareholder letter, he urged his senior team to rethink and streamline how they work. “Think about what you yourself can do to make things better. This is basic business: Can you do more with less? What are your units doing that can be streamlined? Or maybe you are doing things you don’t need to be doing at all,” he wrote. To reinforce that mindset, he introduced a 10% efficiency target across the organization.

“Things are faster and more complex now,” Dimon added. “That means we’ve got to move quicker, coordinate better, and do things at a faster speed.”

When Anderson assumed the CEO role at Bayer, he moved swiftly to dismantle the bureaucracy that had long slowed down the pharmaceutical giant and left employees, in his words, “burdened by the rules” and less customer-focused. He eliminated traditional decision-making hierarchies, annual planning cycles, and rigid org charts, replacing them with a flatter structure built around thousands of autonomous teams, each operating on 90-day goal cycles. 

“The clock’s ticking every 90 days,” he told Fortune’s Leadership Next podcast in February. “There’s no safe place to hide behind a budget target. Do it, go fast, deliver better for customers, use the least resources. And we’ll talk about how you did four times a year.”

He added pointedly, “And, by the way, your peers are going to rate you.”

Meanwhile, Jassy’s simplification strategy at Amazon has centered on reducing the gap between leadership and execution. Last September, he announced a plan to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15% by the end of the first quarter of 2025——a move aimed at flattening the organization and accelerating decision-making. According to Barton, it’s a smart shift. By creating appropriate spans of control, she says leaders can empower integrators, reduce siloed behavior, and foster a culture of collaboration and shared accountability. 

These leaders exemplify what Barton calls “continuous improvers”: executives who repeatedly examine their organizations through the lens of learning and performance, refusing to accept complexity as an inevitable byproduct of scale. 

There is no silver bullet for organizational bloat. But in an increasingly volatile and fast-moving economy, simplification is a strategic imperative, allowing leaders to unlock agility, sharpen focus, and gain a lasting competitive edge.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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• Finance bros and the ultra-wealthy missed out on the tumultuous stock market moves of this week while they were at the Masters. Patrons of the iconic golf tournament aren’t allowed to have their cell phones with them at Augusta National, so they missed out on real-time major market movements spurred by President Donald Trump’s decisions about tariffs.

Unless you’re hiking a mountain so high you lose cell service or embark on a wellness retreat like the White Lotus, it’s pretty challenging to completely unplug. But one iconic sporting event forces its patrons to leave their cell phones behind: the Masters. 

While normally it’s a welcomed time to ignore pings and enjoy a longstanding tradition, wealthy finance professionals attending this year’s golf tournament were shocked to learn of the stock market turmoil resulting from President Donald Trump’s tariffs—and subsequent pause on them. 

Although stocks tanked earlier this week on the news of Trump’s tariffs, they made a triumphant rebound Wednesday when the president announced a 90-day pause on most his aggressive rates. 

“I guess they say it was the biggest day in financial history,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday, after the S&P 500 jumped by more than 9% just hours after the announcement. However, stock market volatility remains.

Meanwhile, Masters spectators were none the wiser to the stock market roller coaster their peers were experiencing in real time. That’s because Masters patrons aren’t allowed to bring their cell phones to the course, and only courtesy telephones are available. 

“It’s a respite from negativity,” Steven Vernon III, a finance professional, told WSJ. “It feels so good to be surrounded by a bunch of people who disconnected.”

A reprieve from watching markets is likely welcomed by finance professionals—considering junior workers put in 80-plus hour weeks. 

It wasn’t until a Wall Street Journal reporter told spectators Trump had paused tariffs that they realized the stock market was ripping. 

Spectator Brett McAtee, a retired business unit director from Phoenix, told WSJ his portfolio had lost about $250,000 when stocks tanked earlier in the week, but he “honestly [hadn’t] thought about it” while trying to enjoy the Masters. 

“It’d be nice to get some of that back,” McAtee told WSJ after learning about the market recovery Wednesday. 

The Masters is notoriously filled with well-to-do spectators, and tickets are exceedingly difficult to get your hands on. If you’re lucky enough to be a member of Augusta National—one of the most exclusive golf clubs in the world—you can get early access to tickets, at which point they cost $450. 

But like other highly sought-after events, some people who get early access to tickets turn around and sell them on third-party platforms, like StubHub. A week-long badge can set a patron back a whopping $20,000, according to Golf Magazine, and even just a pass for a practice round can cost more than $1,000. That doesn’t take into account airfare and hotel stays, which can also get costly due to the popularity of the event.

That’s why the Masters has become a magnet for billionaires, millionaires, and otherwise wealthy individuals. They see the experience as ultra-exclusive. In fact, Augusta-area airports become somewhat of a parking lot for private jets for the wealthy attending the tournament. 

“The Masters is one of the busiest weeks for private aviation in the Southeast, with Augusta Regional often seeing over 1,500 private jet arrivals over the course of the tournament weekend,” Joel Thomas, president of private jet company Stratos Jets, told Simple Flying. “Direct access to the regional airport puts travelers just minutes from the course and gets them in and out of Augusta faster.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com