President Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced Tuesday on X: “Ahead of this year’s @WorldBank Group-@IMFNews Spring Meetings, I look forward to joining @IIF tomorrow morning to share my thoughts on the state of the global financial system.”
(IMF is the International Monetary Fund, which is warning that Trump’s tariffs “will slow global economic growth”; and IIF is the Institute of International Finance.)
Ahead of this year’s @WorldBank Group-@IMFNews Spring Meetings, I look forward to joining @IIF tomorrow morning to share my thoughts on the state of the global financial system.
Tomorrow, my remarks can be watched here at 10:00AM EST: https://t.co/QTD2VY2Vfm
— Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (@SecScottBessent) April 22, 2025
Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers responded to Bessent’s meetings on X: “I asked @kaitlancollins @CNN: Why is @SecScottBessent having meetings in private with large groups of investors to give them the benefit of his thinking? That seems very unfair and seems like the stuff of crony capitalism.”
I asked @kaitlancollins @CNN: Why is @SecScottBessent having meetings in private with large groups of investors to give them the benefit of his thinking? That seems very unfair and seems like the stuff of crony capitalism.
— Lawrence H. Summers (@LHSummers) April 23, 2025
Christis G. Tombazos, Associate Professor of Economics at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, replied to Summers with a post from pro-Trump billionaire investor Bill Ackman, and wrote “The poster boy for crony capitalism loves these meetings.”
As seen below, Ackman praised Bessent — and his announcement — and replied on X: “@SecScottBessent is a steady hand on the wheel guiding us on a windy road that will get our country where we need to go.”
The poster boy for crony capitalism loves these meetings https://t.co/rqz0bCkzu5
— Christis G. Tombazos – Χρίστης Γ. Τομπάζος
(@CTombazos) April 23, 2025
In a quote pulled by Nobel Laureate economist Paul Krugman, Bloomberg reported on Bessent’s private meetings: “US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told a closed-door investor summit Tuesday that the tariff standoff with China cannot be sustained by both sides and that the world’s two largest economies will have to find ways to de-escalate.”
In a post titled ‘Cronyism, Capitulation and Utter Chaos’, Krugman asserted that Bessent’s meetings “moved markets” and asked “what the hell was the Treasury secretary doing giving a closed-door briefing on a significant policy change that hadn’t yet been officially announced? Isn’t that a setup for large-scale insider trading?”