Well, howdy there, Internet people, it's Bell again. So today, we're going to talk about

three big takeaways from Bessent. U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent gave an interview,

and he said three things that have parts that are worth kind of going over. Sometimes it's

confirmation of what we already knew,

and sometimes it's a heads up on the new rhetoric coming out of the White House.

Okay, so first, the giant no surprise one.

Walmart will raise prices.

I mean, we already knew that, but it's weird to hear someone in the administration say it, right?

So what did he say?

Basically, he talked to Walmart after Trump's weird price control social media post and said, quote,

Walmart will be absorbing some of the tariffs. Some may get passed on to consumers. Some in May are doing a lot of

heavy lifting in that sentence. Prices are going up because they have to. Tariffs raise prices.

The other country doesn't pay it. You do. Okay, moving on. Besson had a little bit to say about Moody's dropping the U.S.

credit rating. He said it was a lagging indicator. Cool. New economic vocab word, I don't know

that we've used on the channel before. A lagging indicator is one that looks to the past,

whereas a leading indicator helps tell the

future. The problem for Bessent is that as we talked about, Moody's put out an explanation

of their decision. Quote, we do not believe that material multi-year reductions in mandatory

spending and deficits will result from current

fiscal proposals under consideration. That's not lagging. That's a multi-year look into the future,

and is specifically talking about the one big beautiful bill. So, you'll hear Republicans trying to

downplay it and call it a lagging indicator.

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