So are we going to get a new Fed chair this week?

Former Rubio contact says he isn't Paul Bremer in Iraq: “We’re going to tell them: ‘Hey, this is what you have to do in order for there not to be another strike...That’s what [Trump] sees as running the country.'”

With what? Are they going to put American trooops on the ground?

Trump: "We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition."

From geologist Ivan Sandrea on LinkedIn, what a Venezuelan oil recovery might actually look like. Production may dip before it rises and would take years to return to peak levels.

Trump seems to be on a mission to singlehandedly put the political risk industry out of business. The Maduro capture is yet another shocking geopolitical upheaval that will be basically irrelevant to global businesses and investors. (Unless you’re Chevron. RIP Mike Wirth’s Saturday.)

The “actual or imminent attack” language speaks in intl law. (Under the UN Charter, states may use force in self defense against an armed attack — clearly not an actual grounds here.) But it’s muddled with the Art II constitutional Q of presidential power to act without Congress.

There is going to be a logical pretzel here about Trump still waiting to be the president of peace. This wasn’t an invasion because it is a law enforcement action focused on drugs. But drugs are a national security threat that require military action.

New column on the Fed chair race. I don’t think Scott Bessent will end up in the job, but the process he running is designed to leave him empowered and working with a cooperative, deferential Fed chair. Assuming, of course, that it doesn’t all blow up in his face.

New column on the Fed chair race. I don’t think Scott Bessent will end up in the job, but the process he running is designed to leave him empowered and working with a cooperative, deferential Fed chair. Assuming, of course, that it doesn’t all blow up in his face.

The story of the Fed race is that Scott Bessent goes on the All-In pod and gives a detailed policy prescription for the Fed, citing academic research and economic history. And then Trump will just up and post: "I want my new Fed Chairman to lower Interest Rates if the Market is doing well"

Scott Bessent on the All-In podcast appears to confirm that Michelle Bowman is out of the running for Fed chair. He says he's only expecting to sit through four chair interviews with the president. Warsh, Waller, Hassett have happened. Rieder is upcoming. Or he could just be going on vacation.

I’m watching it now, and this appears to be true.

This is a good WaPo look at Bessent's partisan inclinations, but I strongly disagree that any of this started after he became secretary. Bessent is both fully MAGA and an experienced market hand. If he disagrees with Trump, it's on means, not ends. www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

Karl Rove: "Mr. Trump despises Joe Biden, yet he’s making the same mistake his predecessor made...Telling voters not to believe their own lying checkbooks was politically insane. Mr. Trump is doing the same thing."

The funny thing is that Romney isn't actually saying tax the rich like him, a mere centimillionaire. He wants us to tax the rich like Elon, a centibillioniare. (OK some of the taxes would hit Romney-sized estates, but he's focused on "tax advantaged multibillionaires sailing 300-foot yachts.")

The article is about property insurance

The huge bump in the stock price (+25%) strongly suggests investors had a very dim view of Truth Social ever turning a profit

Trump Media announces a $6b, all-stock merger to “create a company building fusion power plants to provide electricity for artificial intelligence.”

Is there any reason to think Waller is actually leading Warsh other than the fact that Waller said stuff this morning?

"'Anyone who gets the job is damaged goods,' said Andy Laperriere, head of U.S. policy research for Piper Sandler." Good piece, though I think the crux of the issue is how that credibility plays out in the market. I'm not convinced either man would immediately prompt a sharp market reaction.

Politico reports on worries within Trump’s circle about Hassett. Notably absent either for or against is Bessent, who is actually leading the Fed search. Bessent’s choice would seem to be the biggest open question about the choice. Is he pushing his friend Warsh as the next best thing to Bessent?

The Times looks at how Trump business interests overlap with SEC crypto cases in the second term. NYT finds that the SEC inherited 23 crypto cases, of which 14 were dropped, frozen, settled, or conceded. All of those had Trump ties. None of the remaining nine cases do www.nytimes.com/2025/12/14/u...

Barron's makes the Kevins race the cover story

Beaten to the punch by @mattpeterson.bsky.social, but this backs up our piece from last week about concerns among bigwigs on Wall Street about the race for Fed chair www.ft.com/content/df10...

Scoop with Rebecca Ungarino: JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon weighed in on the Fed race at a closed-door even this week. "Kevin Warsh would make a great chairman," Dimon said. He said Kevin Hassett would be most likely to lower interest rates in the short-term, in line with what Trump wants.

I've been curious about Kevin Hassett's time at the Fed in the 1990s. He spoke on a podcast recently about several people he'd worked with there. So I decided to call them up and see what they think of him today. That was the germ of this profile of Hassett, which is our cover story this week. 🧵

The Fed Board voted to reappoint the regional governors, taking a much discussed doomsday scenario off the table. Steve Miran voted to reappoint (it was unanimous.)

Karoline Leavitt is getting quizzed at the WH briefing for her claim that CPI is 2.5%, when the October reading was 3.0. As far as I can tell, the way the admin gets to 2.5% is by counting cumulative CPI *only* for the 8 months since Trump's inauguration, and annualizing.

Powell: “It’s really tariffs that’s causing most of the inflation overshoot. And we do think of those as likely, in the current situation, as likely to be a onetime price increase. Our job is to make sure that it its.” This answer will infuriate Bessent, who insists onetime hikes aren't "inflation"

Kevin Hassett says Jay Powell “has done the right thing” in an interview on Fox. He continues to try to reposition toward a less extreme view of the Fed ahead of a likely chair nomination.

Kevin Hassett says at a WSJ event that the president’s choice for Fed chair isn’t really final yet. “He makes his choice and then he changes his mind,” Hassett says of Trump.

Trump attacks the new Ellison-owned Paramount, saying "THEY ARE NO BETTER THAN THE OLD OWNERSHIP" of CBS. Paramount is biding for Warner on the premise that it has a good relationship with Trump. (The rest of Trump's post is a complaint about Marjorie-Taylor Greene.)

Kevin Hassett leaves the door open to vetoing some of the regional Fed presidents in February. "That's not something I've discussed with the president yet," he says. He was talking to Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business.

It is easy to sneer at this, but what Hassett says here will be critical if he becomes Fed chair. He will argue that because supply-side driven productivity growth is just around the corner, the Fed needs to hold rates down. He is a true believer there, and it happens to line up with what DJT wants.

Hassett getting compared to Liz Truss. '“No one wants to get Truss-ed,” said one market participant, referring to the shock in the UK bond market in 2022 triggered by the then-prime minister Liz Truss’s plans for unfunded tax cuts."

300 pages with no chapter breaks???

A most important question on the Sept. 2 double-tap strike is who had "target engagement authority" (TEA). Wall Street Journal: "A Defense Department official ... said Hegseth was the 'target engagement authority,' the key figure who authorized the strike." www.wsj.com/politics/whi...

Trump again says he's made Fed chair choice. Q: Are you getting closer to a Fed chair announcement? DJT: “I know who I’m going to pick.” Q: “Is it Kevin Hassett?” DJT: “I can’t tell you. We’ll be announcing it.” Hassett earlier said a Bloomberg report that he was the favorite wasn't right.

On the eve of the holiday, a Trump family-linked crypto company disclosed in a securities filing that it had removed its senior leadership. The company's stock is down 72% since Eric and Don Jr rang the Nasdaq bell to launch the partnership. We're covering it here. Happy Thanksgiving.

So currencies. Much medium of exchange. Very store of value. Stablecoins are no more a replacement for dollars than Mexican or Argentine pesos were a replacement for dollars in the 1980s or 1990s. They're the equivalent of a fixed exchange rate peg with ever-present credibility/reserves questions.

Bitcoin makes up 5.6% of Tether's USDT? Yikes. www.ft.com/content/086f...

Business Insider is abandoning its paywall and pivoting back to clicks this holiday season, Status has learned, as internal pressures mount and its subscription bet shows new cracks. Details in @status.news: www.status.news/p/business-i...

Diplomacy! www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Scott Bessent on CNBC this morning made sweeping criticisms of the regional Fed presidents. One scenario often discussed among analysts is that a Trump-controlled Fed board could decline to reappoint all the presidents when their terms expire at the end of February.

ALT5 Sigma's stock is down 80% since the company entered into a partnership to invest in the Trump family-backed WLFI cryptocoin. When our reporter reached out to discuss the stock's fall, Barron's got a response from a defamation attorney. Here's our story, by Joe Light.

Nick Timiraos nicely illustrates the Fed chair’s power—less an autocrat than a tie-breaker. Q is whether the next chair will have the same capability www.wsj.com/economy/cent...

Sheila Bair: "The administration is right to blame the Fed for the high costs of housing, but this is not because it has kept mortgage rates too high. It is because it kept them too low and for too long in years past"

Trump and Mamdani said they talked about Con Ed. Trump: DJT: "We have to get Con Edison to start lowering the rates." ZM: "Absolutely."