Scott Bessent

constricted regulatory regime where the Fed was deemed to be the only game in town.

So imagine one example would be a home in North Florida that sold for $500,000 in 2006.

All of a sudden, people are handing the keys back.

It is now $150,000.

Great buy, great affordability.

But because of the new financial regulation and the incentives that the banks were

in some cases, rightly taken to the woodshed for bad behavior, but there was no incentive to give credit at the bottom.

So what happened, the asset owners, people with money, were able to accumulate assets.

We saw very poor growth during the period, during the Obama administration, and the Fed kept rates low for very long, but what the Fed engaged in starting, I believe, was

October 6th, excuse me, March 6th or March 8th, 2009 was the Fed began what we call QE or large scale asset purchases.

They went in the market, started buying long bonds.

And the theory of the case there is you create liquidity.

You take safe assets out of the market, long duration safe assets, and then the people who receive that money would buy more risky assets.

Ben Bernanke famously said, when he was asked, what's the purpose of QE?

He told everyone, go buy equities.

Well, not everyone could buy equities.

So we ended up

with this two-tier economy where either you were an asset holder or you weren't.

And the Fed constant probably kept or definitely kept QE going for too long.

And