Bessent is no better or worse than his predecessors

The article Trump’s Hedge Fund Guy Is Now Overseeing the U.S. Treasury, IRS, OCC, U.S. Mint, FinCEN, F-SOC, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by Pam & Russ Martens (Wall Street on Parade) describes how, once again, the treasury secretary comes from the financial sector. Like so many other Democrat-adjacent sources these days, the article’s tone suggests that this is somehow more horrible because the “giant orange baby” nominated him, and Orange Man Bad.

“Scott Bessent: U.S. Treasury SecretaryWhat did Bessent do previously to qualify for this powerful position? He ran a hedge fund, Key Square Capital Management LLC, with 25 employees. But, more important to the transactional world of Donald Trump, Bessent gave $1.25 million to PACs supporting Trump and tens of thousands of dollars to state and national Republican parties and candidates.”

Look, this isn’t great. It’s not great that a hedge-fund manager is Treasury Secretary. But … honestly? Who did you expect to get the role? My entire life has been filled with utterly appalling and much more powerful treasury secretaries.

Here’s a counterfactual: maybe we should be happy that Trump nominated some stumblebum who’d only run a hedge fund with 25 employees to be in charge of Treasury. Maybe he won’t be able to get out of his own way[1].

Be honest with yourself: did you even know who the last few decades of treasury secretaries were or what they did? I did. I’ve been watching them very carefully for almost two decades now.

Will Bessent really be worse than Biden’s Janet Yellen, who never saw a war she didn’t want to finance the shit right out of? Or Larry Summers, that Jabba-the-fucking-Hut sonofabitch who’s so elitist that he makes most other elitists look like sons of the soil? Let’s see, who else we got? Hank Paulson? Tim Geitner? Robert Rubin? Steve Mnuchin? All craven creatures of Wall Street.

Bessent is almost certainly not going to be any worse than any of those buffoons, who worked as hard as they could to funnel money upward, toward themselves and their ilk. Bessent will do the same but our best hope is that he will be more incompetent at it.