Fmr Home Depot CEO reveals his thoughts on banking crisis

In a conversation with Yahoo! Finance Live's Julie Hyman and Brian Sozzi, former Chrysler (STLA) and Home Depot (HD) CEO Bob Nardelli says the only thing certain about the challenges facing today's business community is how uncertain they are. During 2008, as then-CEO of Chrysler, Nardelli says he was "singularly focused on the banking situation." Today, banking chaos is no longer the only issue CEOs must navigate. Instead, the bedlam "just adds another level of complexity" to a host of other hurdles.

What challenges are those? Nardelli mentions supply chain woes and an excess demand for labor, along with the ever-present threat of inflation. That being said, the outlook for inflation has improved, based on data out this week. But a strong majority of economists still expect a 25bps interest rate hike from the Fed next week. "The breadth of constituents that a CEO and a company has to try and satisfy," Nardelli says, "is as broad and as deep as I've ever seen it." And therein lies the challenge. "When you try to satisfy everyone, you end up satisfying no one."

Even more troublesome is how sudden these issues have sprouted. With the example of the SVB collapse, Nardelli points out, "who went to bed Thursday night thinking that their deposits were going to be frozen on Friday?" Businesses today must deal with "the certainty of uncertainty." Looking closer at SVB, Nardelli says "there seemed to be some potential inequity" with some investors that were "aware to pull out $42 billion on Thursday," while others "couldn't make payroll because their accounts were frozen."

Key Video Moments:

00:00:34 -- What a CEO has to manage today is "broad and deep"

00:01:02 -- When you try to satisfy everyone, you end up satisfying no one.

00:01:31 -- We're dealing with a "certainty of uncertainty"

00:01:46 -- How did certain investors know to pull out their money from SVB?

For more of our conversation with Bob Nardelli, click here.