Scott Bessent

And what we've ended up with here is they pushed the asset price up.

The interest rates were low.

Many people couldn't buy a house during COVID, but now the interest rate has normalized.

And we're just in a much more normal period for interest rates, but we're not in a normal period for asset prices because so many people still have the 3% mortgages from COVID.

And back to your question on what should the Fed buy, traditionally,

The Fed, since large-scale asset purchases began in 2009, they just bought government bonds.

They choose the duration.

They switched during COVID because, look, there were estimates we were going to have a 20%, 30%, 40% GDP increase.

decrease.

So they were buying indices of high yield bonds, of corporate bonds to stabilize the market.

I think what you're alluding to, Jason, is also during that period, in conjunction with Treasury, there were bailouts, and that's done by a facility

that is negotiated between the Fed and the Treasury called a 13-3 facility.

And you identify strategic industries that may be struggling.

It would not have behooved anyone for the airline industry to go belly up because of a virus that turned out to be quite transitory.

So, again, I think these are emergency powers.

I think they should have them in an emergency.

But I think the duration went on much, much too long.

Well, it's like...

John Maynard Keynes said, a lot of economics is a beauty pageant.

You're just picking who do you think is going to win.