Scott Bessent, a former Soros money manager, is Donald Trump’s pick to lead the U.S. Treasury

Scott Bessent, a former Soros money manager, is Donald Trump’s pick to lead the U.S. Treasury

U.S. president-elect Donald Trump announced Friday that he’ll nominate former George Soros money manager Scott Bessent, an advocate for deficit reduction, to serve as his next treasury secretary.

Trump said online Bessent would “help me usher in a new Golden Age for the United States.” 

Bessent, 62, is the founder of hedge fund Key Square Capital Management, after having worked on-and-off for Soros Fund Management since 1991. If confirmed by the Senate, he would be the nation’s first openly gay treasury secretary.

He told Bloomberg in August that he decided to join Trump’s campaign in part to attack the mounting U.S. national debt. That would include slashing government programs and other spending.

“This election cycle is the last chance for the U.S. to grow our way out of this mountain of debt without becoming a sort of European-style socialist democracy,” he said then.

As of Nov. 8, the U.S. national debt stands at $35.94 trillion, with both the Trump and Biden administrations having added to it. Trump’s policies added $8.4 trillion, while the Biden administration increased it by $4.3 trillion, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a fiscal watchdog.

Even as he pushes to lower the national debt by stop spending, Bessent has backed extending provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which Trump signed into law in his first year in office. Estimates from various economic analysis of the costs of the various tax cuts range between nearly $6 trillion and $10 trillion over 10 years. Nearly all of the law’s provisions are set to expire at the end of 2025.

Before becoming a Trump donor and adviser, Bessent donated to various Democratic causes in the early 2000s, notably Al Gore’s presidential run. He also worked for Soros, a major supporter of Democrats. Bessent had an influential role in Soros’s London operations, including his famous 1992 bet against the pound, which generated huge profits on “Black Wednesday,” when the pound was de-linked from European currencies.

Bessent’s selection wasn’t surprising; He had been among the names floated for the treasury secretary role. At an October Detroit Economic Club event, Trump called Bessent “one of the top analysts on Wall Street.”

Tariffs aimed primarily at China: Bessent

Bessent told Bloomberg in August that he views tariffs as a “one-time price adjustment” and “not inflationary,” and said tariffs imposed during a second Trump administration would be directed primarily at China.

He wrote in a Fox News op-ed this week that tariffs are “a useful tool” for achieving foreign policy objectives.

“Whether it is getting allies to spend more on their own defence, opening foreign markets to U.S. exports, securing co-operation on ending illegal immigration and interdicting fentanyl trafficking, or deterring military aggression, tariffs can play a central role.”

Bessent told Fox News earlier this month when asked if tariffs would pay for Trump’s large-scale deportation operation that he had been working on a plan for what he called “financial deportations,” explaining he would restrict the flow of remittances to migrants’ home countries.

Bessent has also floated ideas for how the Trump administration could put pressure on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, whose term expires in May 2026. Last month, Bessent suggested Trump could name a replacement chair early, and let that person function as a “shadow” chair, with the goal of essentially sidelining Powell.

But after the election, Bessent reportedly backed away from that plan. Powell, for his part, has said he wouldn’t step down if Trump asked him to do so, and added that Trump, as president, doesn’t have the authority to fire him.

Trump repeatedly attacked Powell during his first term for raising the Fed’s key rate in 2017 and 2018. During the 2024 campaign, he said that as president he should have a “say” in the central bank’s interest rate decisions. Presidents traditionally avoid commenting on the Fed’s policies.

Published at Sat, 23 Nov 2024 00:21:33 +0000

These rare and mysterious deepsea fish are washing up in California, and no one’s sure why

Ben Frable considers himself a librarian of fish, and he just acquired a rare new specimen for his collection. 

A 3.3-metre oarfish — a mysterious deepsea creature shaped like an eel — washed up earlier this month on the shores of California..

Thanks to the efforts of a keen-eyed PhD student, it will soon be added to Frable’s “fish library,” better known as the marine vertebrate collection at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, Calif.

“They’re very rare encounters for us,” Frable, the collection’s manager, told As It Happens host Nil Kӧksal.

“Getting to see a fresh specimen with a bright silver skin and that bright red fin, and just the full scale of it laid out, was pretty astounding.”

What do we know about oarfish?

Oarfish are massive and elusive fish with reflective skin who reside in the oceans’ depths all over the world.

Sometimes called “doomsday fish,” they are described in Japanese folklore as harbingers of disaster. It’s suspected they could even be the origin of the mythical sea serpents drawn throughout history on sailors’ maps. 

The longest oarfish ever recorded was eight metres long, making them the biggest species of bony fish. Frable says some partial remains suggest they could reach as long as 11 metres.

Because they’re deepsea fish, humans don’t encounter them very often. Footage captured in recent years has shed some light on how they hunt — hovering vertically with their heads up, waiting for prey to swim by. 

“Their main prey item, even though they do kind of look ferocious and get pretty big, are actually very small shrimp-like creatures called krill,” Frable said. “And then they have this very elaborate mouth that they can use to generate suction and slurp down these krill.”

There’s so much scientists still don’t know about oarfish, Frable said, and most of what they do know comes from studying their remains when they wash ashore. 

Even that, Frable says, is rare. There are only 22 scientific recordings of the creatures washing up in California since 1901.

“That doesn’t give us a very large sample size,” he said. “So each specimen can really provide a lot of insight into these animals.”

That’s why he was so excited when he heard from Alison Laferriere, a Scripps PhD student, on Nov. 7. 

Nearly swiped by surfers

Laferriere, who studies ocean acoustics, was walking her dog along the Grandview Beach in Encinitas, Calif., when she spotted an “elongated object” on the ground. 

“As I got closer, I recognized it immediately,” she said. “I knew it was rare, so I knew it was important.”

She reached out to Frable, who contacted the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to recover the fish and bring it in for a necropsy.

While she waited for the team to arrive, Laferriere stood guard over the grisly discovery. 

“Shortly after I found it, I had gone back to my beach chairs to tell my fiancé about it, and I turned around and I see a surfer walking down the beach with the fish on the surfboard,” she said.

Laferreriere ran up him and his friends, explained the fish’s scientific value, and convinced him to put it back.

“He said, ‘I just wanted to put it in my friend’s van,'” she said, laughing. “I’m glad that I didn’t end up in someone’s van and then the garbage. I’m glad I was able to help.”

3rd in as many months

When oarfish wash ashore, Frable says, there tends to be more than one.

In fact, this is the third oarfish specimen to turn up in California in as many months, including one Scripps recovered in La Jolla in August. 

“That might indicate that maybe these fish are moving around and are in a specific location for a year or two and then move away from that location,” he said.

“While they’re here, if they’re disoriented or sick or dying — we don’t really know why — they will eventually wash onto beaches. But we don’t have a good answer as to why that might be happening now in California.”

In 2013, the last time oarfish were turning up in California, marine biologist Milton Love told As It Happens he suspected a change in ocean currents brought the fish out of the calm deep waters they’re used to, and into more turbulent shallow waters.

“They’re just very delicate, and I think that they just died from trauma, basically,” he said at the time. 

Nearly a decade later, he told the New York Times that’s still his best guess.

A bad omen?

Several of the creatures washed ashore in Japan ahead of the catastrophic 2011 earthquake, further entrenching their doomsday reputation. But a 2019 study by Japanese scientists found no correlation between quakes and oarfish appearances. 

Frable he’s not worried the recent finds signify anything ominous. 

“If there was something bad happening in the ecosystem, we wouldn’t just see a couple of random fish,” he said. “We’d see a lot of other organisms also showing up on our beaches.”

Laferreriere seemed similarly unfazed.

“I’m hoping, you know, it’s not specifically a bad omen for me,” she said with a laugh.

Published at Fri, 22 Nov 2024 22:58:58 +0000