Scott Bessent

So back to Jason's question on BLS, how robust are the numbers?

I think there are a lot of changes that could be adjusted to give us a better picture.

Sure.

So Fed was created in 1913 as a response to the panic of 1907, which most people don't know about.

It made the crash of 29 look like a day at the beach.

Nickerbocker crisis, yeah.

The Nickerbocker crisis and just a domino effect within the financial system.

There was no central bank.

Bank of England is a very old central bank and had been functioning well.

JP Morgan actually had to personally step in.

in the crisis.

And it was deemed that there should be a mechanism for the government to be able to either wind down, provide liquidity, and have a greater control on the economy rather than private operators.

For much of its history, Treasury had a seat at the table on the Federal Reserve.

Post-World War II, that stopped.

And then

If we look at more recent history, what happened after the great financial crisis, we saw this paralysis in the economy.

I think a huge part of it, which has been part of my regulatory agenda here at Treasury this year through the Financial Stability Oversight Council is undoing the poorly thought out crisis legislation

But what the crisis legislation did, and look, after financial, I studied and taught at Yale the history of financial crises, there's always retribution.

And you go from a lax regulatory regime to an over-constricted regulatory regime.

So coming out of the dramatic GFC for 10 years, we had this over-