OVERNIGHT FINANCE: Fiorina jumps into 2016 race

TOMORROW STARTS TONIGHT: HERE COMES CARLY. For Carly Fiorina, the stakes have never been higher. The former CEO of Hewlett Packard officially entered into the 2016 presidential race earlier today. And her political future — and her business legacy — largely depends on whether she can convince a mainstream audience that her six-year tenure over HP wasn’t the complete disaster her critics contend. Story: http://bit.ly/1cePKyO

{mosads}– THE BACKSTORY: Fiorina, the first female Fortune 20 CEO, was fired by HP’s controversial board of directors. She was brought on to inject new life into an aging company. She’s said she was unprepared for the glaring media spotlight that came with breaking the business world’s highest glass ceiling. Publicly, she projected confidence — doubling the size of the company and filing record numbers of new patents to transform HP into an innovation hub during one of the most turbulent economic periods in America’s tech industry. But Fiorina claims in her new memoir Rising to the Challenge that she was undermined by the company’s board of directors. In an interview with The Hill, Fiorina accused members of the board of leaking confidential information to undermine her. In 2005, Fiorina was fired. http://bit.ly/1QgtW4c

Three quick points…

1.) WHY CARLY’S CANDIDACY MATTERS: Fiorina lost her 2010 challenge to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) largely for the same reason 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney lost to President Obama: both Fiorina and Romney were portrayed as out-of-touch business executives who didn’t care about everyday Americans. Fiorina is a longshot to win the Republican nomination in 2016. But her ability to deliver an economic message to her core audience without getting thrown off from political attacks could prove to be a template for Republicans moving forward.

2.) FIORINA’S ROLLOUT: Fiorina spoke with reporters for 45-minutes this morning after announcing her candidacy formally on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” She fielded policy questions on the economy, social issues and foreign policy. No, Chipotle didn’t come up once. RT @Kasie Hunt, MSNBC political correspondent: “Carly Fiorina set a high standard on her announcement press call for taking a long, wide-ranging list of substantive policy questions.”

3.) GOP STRATEGIST RON BONJEAN’S TAKE: “Carly Fiorina helps to provide the GOP field with a strong, accomplished female voice into the mix that will sharply contrast Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail.  She can speak with authority as a former executive who understands the private sector and the economy. If she plays her cards right by taking on Hillary Clinton while showcasing her experience, she could position herself well to be a vice presidential pick or potentially as a future Treasury or Commerce Secretary in a Republican Administration.”

THIS IS OVERNIGHT FINANCE. And it’s only Monday, but it’s an awesome day outside. Soak up the sun. Stay grateful. Chin up. Keep moving. It’s spring in D.C. Tweet: @kevcirilli; email: kcirilli@digital-release.thehill.com; and subscribe:http://digital-release.thehill.com/signup/48. Back to work…

Fiorina’s rollout did hit one snafu on Monday: From The Hill’s Ben Kamisar: “Visitors to the page CarlyFiorina.org on Monday encountered the following message: ‘Carly Fiorina failed to register this domain. So I’m using it to tell you how many people she laid off at Hewlett-Packard,’ the site says. The site then includes 30,000 sad-face emoticons to represent the people that it says were laid off while she led the technology company.”

Fiorina’s campaign hit back: “Leslie Shedd, a press secretary with Carly for America, said the site shows Democrats are already looking for ways to attack Fiorina ahead of the tough GOP primary. http://bit.ly/1AADPR0

DAYS UNTIL EX-IM SHUTS DOWN: 56. Export-Import Bank president Fred Hochberg was in Boulder, Colo., earlier today with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.). The trio hosted a roundtable highlighting American exports for small businesses in the agriculture sector. The embattled bank says the past five years have been the strongest in history for agricultural trade, with U.S. agricultural exports totaling $675 billion since 2010. 

— From over the weekend: My quick-take on the key-players shaping the fate of the bank: http://bit.ly/1OTOnXe

2016 CLOUDS OVER BUDGET, via Rebecca Shabad and Bernie Becker: “The Senate’s efforts to pass the first GOP budget agreement in a decade largely hinges on the four Republicans in the chamber eyeing the White House in 2016.

“Two of those Republicans, Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Rand Paul (Ky.), were the only GOP senators to oppose the Senate budget that passed in March. The other two, Sens. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.), ended up backing a framework which boosts defense spending and would pave the way for Republicans to send a measure repealing ObamaCare to President Obama’s desk, key priorities for both lawmakers.

“For the four lawmakers, the opportunity to vote on a joint House-Senate budget gives them a platform to distinguish themselves from not just each other, but the rest of a GOP field that is growing almost by the day. Only Graham has yet to make his 2016 plans official. The senators can also cater to their favored constituencies, like libertarians for Paul or evangelicals for Cruz.” http://bit.ly/1DPQq2S

FED WATCH: via WSJ’s Jeff Elder and Michael S. Derby: In brief comments Monday, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President John Williams sounded an optimistic note on the economy and said he expects to see further improvement in employment as the year moves forward. ‘I am very optimistic as to where the economy is going over the next couple of years,’ Mr. Williams said. ‘We’ve gotten the national economy back to basically full strength,’ he said, adding what is now a 5.5% jobless rate will likely move to 5% by year’s end. His comments came from remarks in San Francisco, where the policy maker focused on the factors it takes to support small business owners. He didn’t comment on the outlook for short-term interest rates, but he did say ‘we’re finally coming into the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.'” http://on.wsj.com/1Kadoqr

BILL CLINTON DEFENDS FOUNDATION. Ben Kamisar for The Hill: “Bill Clinton says his family foundation did nothing ‘knowingly inappropriate’ in accepting foreign donations while Hillary served as secretary of State.” http://bit.ly/1FKAtkv

CONSUMER SPENDING INCREASES, via Rebecca Shabad: “Consumer spending in the U.S. rose in April to an average of $91 a day, according to a survey released Monday by Gallup. The average is up from a daily average of $86 in March and represents the highest April figure since Gallup began tracking Americans’ daily spending in 2008. Last April’s average was $88. The $5 increase from March to April is the largest monthly increase since November 2014, Gallup added.” http://bit.ly/1KaewKL

JANET YELLEN RESPONDS TO HENSARLING… JUSTICE OFFICIALS INVESTIGATING FED BOARD. Craig Torres for Bloomberg: Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said on Monday that the U.S. Department of Justice has joined the investigation into a leak of confidential monetary-policy information in 2012.

‘The Board’s Inspector General and the Department of Justice are in the midst of an investigation into this matter,’ Yellen said in a letter to Representative Jeb Hensarling, chairman of the House Financial Service Committee. ‘We are cooperating fully with them and look forward to the results of their investigation.’

Yellen said she would also provide the names of Fed personnel who had contact with Medley Global Advisors, which published a report on deliberations of a September 2012 closed door meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, one day before minutes of the meeting were made public. http://bloom.bg/1PjgCtu

ICYMI: CNN DUBS ELIZABETH WARREN ‘CLICKBAIT.’ No byline on the story: “Anyone in the online news business knows there are certain figures who draw consistent interest from readers. Those same people will likely tell you that Senator Elizabeth Warren, the progressive doyenne who’s cultivated a passionate national following in her two years on Capitol Hill, is clickbait…

“The Massachusetts Democrat may be most attractive to left-leaning sites like Vox and proudly progressive sites like Salon. But Warren stories are a hit on CNN, too. There was a reason Warren was the only Democratic lawmaker named in the headline when CNN’s Brian Stelter wrote last month about the liberal opposition to the proposed Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger. Vox has published 36 stories with Warren’s name in the headline since the site launched a little more than a year ago, and — as Yglesias suggested – many of those stories were widely shared on social media.” http://cnnmon.ie/1ESE92Q

SHELBY’S PARTING SHOT, from over the weekend in the New York Times: For now, Republican Senate colleagues are optimistic about the presidential aspirants’ ability to make it back to Washington for crucial votes, and about the party leadership’s willingness to try to work around their campaign schedules, when possible. ‘Remember when Obama and Clinton were running? And we didn’t see much of them, did we?’ said Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama.” http://nyti.ms/1IbJlkU

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