Billionaire hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, an adviser to former President Donald Trump who is being talked about as a potential pick for Treasury Secretary, said the “animal spirits are being unleashed” in the markets now that Trump has been re-elected to the White House.
The founder and CEO of Key Square Group used the term from British economist Maynard Keynes — which describes when investors feel compelled to act — during an interview with The Daily Wire, as the Dow Jones index jumped over 1,500 points to a record high after Trump won.
“Animal spirits are being unleashed,” Bessent said about the optimism being seen in the stock market following the election. He noted there was “high inflation” and “divisive rhetoric from the Democrats,” but “what was really hurting business and what we call in economics, something we can’t identify, is animal spirits.”
Bessent went on to talk about how there was a “huge build-up of the regulatory state” during the Obama-Biden and Biden-Harris administrations that implemented a “real cost” to consumers and households while putting a damper on the GDP of the United States.
“President Biden’s Cabinet was the least business-friendly Cabinet because there are no business people in it. Even the head of the Small Business Administration, I don’t think she had a private sector job for years,” Bessent said, referring to SBA Administrator Isabel Guzman.
“Look at what we just avoided,” he went on, before pointing out that Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Waltz, “have never had a private sector job in their adult lives. Never had a private sector job. You know, I hope they can get one starting in January.”
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By contrast, Trump is “a businessman” who comes off as “economically sophisticated” during their discussions, Bessent said. He also highlighted Trump’s alliance with tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, “one of the greatest business people of, or the greatest businessman of this generation.”
Bessent said he expects Trump to issue executive orders to cut down on regulation, citing energy in particular. He also advocated for renewing or making permanent Trump’s tax law, big parts of which are set to expire next year, and stopping the “chaos” abroad that could bring down inflation.
“We’re going to see private sector hiring because what we’ve seen under Harris-Biden is just this gigantic government leviathan getting bigger and bigger with this massive government spending,” he said. “For all they touted on their industrial policy, they created 18,000 manufacturing jobs.”
Bessent continued: “Last year, there were only 250,000 private sector jobs. Everything else was government or government adjacent. So the way I phrase it is, we are going to re-privatize the economy, restart private sector, and the working-class people are going to do well. Big business will continue doing well, and small business, I think, is going to do great.”
