Among the flurry of cabinet appointments being made by President-elect Donald Trump, none is more important than his choice for Treasury Secretary. After what several media have described as a “knife fight” among various Wall Street contenders, the final selection went to Scott Bessent, who currently runs the hedge fund Key Square Capital Management.
Various media have noted Bessent’s long-standing ties to mega-speculator George Soros, who until now has been something of a bête noire of the MAGA camp. But a greatly-pleased article in London’s The Economist, headlined, “What Scott Bessent’s Appointment Means for the Trump Administration,” notes the depth, duration and magnitude of Bessent’s ties to Soros:
“In 1992, as a young portfolio manager at Soros Fund Management, he tipped off Stanley Druckenmiller, a partner at the firm, that the Bank of England would probably be unwilling to defend the pound, as the British economy was struggling. Mr. Druckenmiller and George Soros went on to make one of the most famous and successful hedge-fund trades of all time: they bet against sterling and `broke the Bank of England,’ making $1 billion in the process. When Mr. Bessent set out to run his own fund in 2015, he did so with a $2 billion investment from Mr. Soros.”
The Economist goes on to lay out Bessent’s assignment to stop Trump from doing anything the City of London and Wall Street disapprove of.
