Scott Bessent

Should each one of the regional banks have a specialty, go back to a center of excellence?

Why do we have so many overlapping functions?

I can tell you, for me, as someone who's an economic historian, the interview process has been fantastic because I got to interview 11 of the most knowledgeable people on economics, the Fed,

monetary policy.

One time I got to interview five, another time, and I'll be with four of them with the president.

So, you know, I think I understand probably better than just about anybody in the country what needs to be done.

And everyone wants to see a smaller footprint and more predictability from what's going on.

Jason, two things.

One, there's nothing I can promise because there's always a degree of uncertainty.

But one of the things that we've been doing here at Treasury, when we talk about loosening the financial regulations, that the

companies that suffered the most under these regulations were the small banks.

So we have seen small and community banks disappear at an alarming rate.

About half of them have disappeared since the GFC.

So what I can promise is that the regulatory regime for those banks is being loosened and is the saying that there's

three, eight banks in the U.S.

that are too big to fail, that the policies since the GFC were too small to succeed.

And we are doing everything to unleash the lending capability of these banks.

Their profitability will enable them to be part of their communities, to lend more.

70%, I think, by doing statistics, 70% of ag lending

30, 40% of real estate lending, 40% of small business lending are from these main street lenders.