Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW.

It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world.

What's going on, guys? It is Monday, November 25th, and today we are talking about the next

Treasury Secretary of the United States of America. Before we get into that, however, if you are

enjoying the breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to

dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the

show notes or go to bit.ly slash

breakdown pod. Hello friends, happy Monday. The Trump transition team has announced macro hedge fund

manager Scott Bessent as their selection for Treasury Secretary. This has been a real back and

forth, right? Bessent was reportedly Trump's original pick coming out of the election,

but the process was sidetracked by a dispute with transition team co-chair and Cantor Fitzgerald,

CEO Howard Lutnik, which Trump advisors described as a knife fight. After weeks of speculation and

several new candidates being put forward, it appears that Trump has circled back to his original

pick, a man he described once as one of the

most brilliant men on Wall Street. And that's the general view among financial professionals,

that Besson is a genius money manager whose skills in macro analysis make him uniquely suited

to the role as head of Treasury. Bessent spent a decade as the CEO of George Soros family office

before spinning off his own fund in 2015.

This was part of the challenge, as some corners of the MAGA universe are skeptical of the Soros link, but Besson fits the mold of many former Democrats who are getting behind Trump ahead

of this administration. During the 2000 Al Gore campaign, Besson was one of the largest Democrat

donors, hosting a fundraiser at his house in East Hampton. He continued donating to

Democrats all the way to the Barack Obama campaign in 2012. This year, however, Besson was one of the

...