All posts tagged "Scott Bessent"

President Donald Trump has joked that he turned Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent into a "monster," and a new report details the temper behind the punchline.

The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that Bessent's outbursts helped drive an unusual wave of departures from the top ranks of the Treasury Department.

More than 30 current and former officials and associates spoke to The Journal, describing a secretary who tears into aides at every level....

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is repeating the same doomed bond-market play he once got rich betting against, according to an economic analyst.

Catherine Rampell, economics editor at The Bulwark, made the case on an episode of her podcast "Receipts" on Tuesday as she and journalist Sam Stein picked apart Bessent's recent interview with Axios, in which he stood by telling markets last month, "I am the house now."

"No, 'cause look, the house doesn't win every hand," Bessent told Axios. "The house plays the percentages." He conceded he may have "hurt some fragile egos on Wall Street."...

Two news anchors reacted with alarm to the global bond selloff and mocked the Trump administration's failed response.

On Tuesday, CNN anchor Erin Burnett and Richard Quest, the host of Quest Means Business, explained what's happening in the global bond market and why it spells trouble for major economies.

Burnett described how "turmoil" like the war in Iran has led to "meaningful economic impacts, and people experience them every single day." Referring to a global bond selloff, Burnett explained, "something happened today in the market that was sort of a five-alarm fire when it comes to where things are going."...

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has become afraid of President Donald Trump over mounting frustrations with the Iran war, The Daily Mail reported Saturday.

Anonymous insiders say that Trump is increasingly turning away from Hegseth after the two got into an argument at Camp David earlier this month, according to the report. Instead, Trump is turning more to another one of his favored "yes-men," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

"One is a sledgehammer, and the other is a scalpel," an anonymous insider told The Daily Mail....

Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh delivered a much-anticipated policy speech and said almost nothing, which economics columnist Catherine Rampell says was the point.

During a Friday morning speech in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Warsh warned that inflation remained "still worrisome" and landed a single joke aimed at monetary-policy obsessives. The audience could call his remarks "an outline" or "a framework," he said, "but don't call it forward guidance."

Watching Warsh is "like reading a scroll in a different language that you're not familiar with," journalist Sam Stein said in a Friday episode of Receipts Live. Stein argued that a Fed chair's job is "to never make news."...

President Donald Trump's threat to use military intervention to handle the troubled bond markets is baffling his online critics.

On Friday, a reporter asked Trump about increasing bond yields, which Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has struggled to contain after a failed debt buyback intervention earlier this week.

"Have you talked to Bessent about another type of intervention?" a reporter asked Trump....