Caught an interesting take from the Treasury Secretary this week. Scott Bessent basically said the Fed isn't in any rush to cut interest rates right now, even though rate cuts might happen eventually. The whole Iran situation has made things too uncertain for aggressive moves, so the central bank is taking a wait-and-see approach. Makes sense when you think about it - the economy was actually running pretty hot heading into spring, so there wasn't this urgent need to slash rates anyway.

What's curious is how the inflation picture keeps shifting. We got March data on Friday showing inflation jumped three times faster than February, mainly from oil and gas spikes. But here's the thing - when you strip out food and energy, the numbers came in softer than expected. Bessent's basically saying this inflation spike is temporary and won't stick around in people's minds or wage expectations. His exact words were something like 'if there's ever been a team transitory, it's this.' Fair point given the geopolitical factors driving energy prices.

On the economy itself, Bessent was pretty confident. He mentioned back in February he thought growth could hit over 4% this year, and when asked if he still believes that, he basically said yeah but we'll need some catch-up time. So the baseline is still solid growth, just with some near-term headwinds.

Separately, there's been some drama around Kevin Warsh, Trump's pick to replace Powell as Fed chair. The wealth filings came out and Warsh is significantly richer than recent Fed chairs - we're talking $131 to $209 million in disclosed holdings, plus hundreds of millions more in assets his wife holds. For comparison, Powell's 2025 filing showed $19 to $75 million. Warsh also pulled in $10 million advising investor Stanley Druckenmiller, which he jokes is his day job, plus another $3 million from Stanford and various Wall Street gigs.

Bessent defended Warsh, saying the key criterion is whether someone has an open mind. He also mentioned Warsh wants to shake up how the reserve banks operate - apparently about 50% of people in each reserve bank don't even report to the president, which Bessent called a management disaster. There's some Senate pushback though, particularly from Senator Tillis who's holding up the process over the Powell investigation. Hearings could start next week at the earliest.