Scott Bessent

And there was a point, and I'm somewhat sympathetic to the people who believe that, but by 2013, when Xi Jinping came in,

And great writers like Elizabeth Economy, who had been of that view, reversed and said, he's a different kind of cat.

It's no longer going to be Chinese policies with capitalist tendencies.

It's just going to go back to hard communism, Leninism.

And I just think that

It was a failure of imagination.

I've said several times, people, and maybe we'll talk about it today, when people ask me, what are you looking for in a Fed chair?

It's someone with an open mind.

If we go back to the 1990s, Alan Greenspan did a magnificent job because he had an open mind that the internet...

office modernization boom was going to create a productivity bonanza for the U.S.

economy.

And he let the economy, he let it rip.

And we had an incredible economy, paid down a tremendous amount of debt that by 1998, 1999, with a combination of

Clinton administration having gotten religion, Newt Gingrich and his policies, there was talk at the end of the 90s that there might not be enough government debt to meet the needs of the financial system, which is the opposite of what we have now.

So, again, I would...

Part of it was just anything the president does must be wrong.

Part of it was a failure of imagination.

And, you know, there's some very good studies coming out now that are showing why everyone has been wrong.

The measurement problems on...

the increase in goods prices.