Do banks care if you lean conservative?

I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles.

Published reports indicate an executive order could be on the way as early as today to push regulators to investigate whether banks discriminate against customers based on politics.

Marketplace's Henry F. reports.

The order would follow years of complaints by some

conservatives who claim banks turned them down over their political or religious views. President

Donald Trump himself claimed in a CNBC interview on Tuesday that two large banks turned down

his deposits. After he left office in 2021, he did not cite specific evidence for those claims.

Large banks have denied that they discriminate on political grounds, but they in turn have

pointed the finger at regulators whose rules, they say, have discouraged them from working with

certain customers. Regulators have responded to those industry complaints. In June,

the Federal Reserve said that it would no longer consider reputational risk in its supervision of banks, meaning the potential for bad publicity or lawsuits. There is evidence that banks turn away customers, though not clearly for political reasons. An analysis by the Senate Banking Committee earlier this year found that over 8,000 people complained

to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau over the last three years that they had accounts improperly closed.

I'm Henry App for Marketplace.

Let's get an update now on the makers of brand name weight loss drugs where the stocks have been

plummeting, the stock price of the Wagovi Company,

Novo Nordisk, based in Denmark, down 34% over the last week and a half. Stock in the Zepbound

company, Eli Lilly of Indianapolis, down nearly 6% over that time. This is in part about competition

from what are called compounding pharmacies, outfits that normally prepare customized medicines for patients, but their role here is a little different. Marketplace's Nova Sapo explains.

Compounding pharmacies are supposed to serve a limited purpose. One example is a patient who has to take a pill, says Mansour Amiji,

pharmaceutical sciences professor at Northeastern University.

A compounding pharmacist can crush it, put it in a syrup,

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