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Who will be left standing in the Apprentice-style battle for U.S. Treasury Secretary?
You have to hand it to Donald Trump: only he could turn a boring, snoring transition into a gripping, fresh season of reality TV.
Just like season one on The Apprentice there are shock winners (Matt Gaetz, Peter Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard), shock “you’re fired” losers (Ric Grenell, Mike Pompeo), a couple of boardroom side-kick judges (Elon Musk, Linda McMahon) and sporadic, sharp reminders, in case anyone forgets, about who is ultimately calling the shots: The Big Guy.
He’s even cast the caricature role that made the show’s first season a standout. Co-Transition head, and self-publicized candidate for Treasury Secretary, Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick seems to have stepped into the shoes of Omarosa Manigault Newman, who famously played the truculent attention-grabber who irritated everyone around her, but became a household name in the process.
And, just in case the audience was starting to nod off, there’s now a showstopper of a finale, keeping us on the edge of our seats as Trump rips up the original two-man race for Treasury Secretary and widens the field to include a whole new cast of characters….
Who knew that the search for America’s Next Top Banker could be so exciting?
It’s hard to concentrate.
So, instead of spending the time on a higher cause, I’ve bought in and spent a couple hours phoning my contacts on Wall Street to find out how they would handicap the race.
Fortunately, when you’ve written a book about Wall Street (ahem, The Devil’s Casino, Wiley, 2010) there’s a handful of people in your contacts who don’t mind being bothered for a bit of informed speculation on a Monday. Also, fortunately, these days people seem to be available during the lunch hour. That wasn’t the case when I was reporting The Devil’s Casino.
So: the consensus (and, yes, it was a consensus) among the handful of senior bankers I spoke to, not for attribution and on background, is as follows:
1) In first place: Marc Rowan, the CEO of Apollo. (Disclosure. I know Marc; I like him tremendously. He’s serious, but always charming. Including when you run into him at the gym, the golf course and at the dermatologist…)
Pros: Of all the candidates he would be the most reassuring to the markets. He has the relevant experience and the right temperament. Under his watch the stock at Apollo has gone up 400%. “He’s very strategic,” says one source. “And the good news is that on the technical issues, Trump tends to leave the Treasury secretary alone, 90% of the time.”
Further, according to a different source he’s discrete. “He talks to Democrats. He talks to Republicans..but you never hear about it…he knows when to take sides, and when not.”
Trump is said to have been very impressed by Rowan’s unusual time in the spotlight, last year, publicly decrying the administration of his alma mater, Penn, for indulging anti-semitism, pulling his donation and encouraging other board members to do the same until two leaders resigned. “But he also knew when to get out of the limelight,” says this person. “So Trump is likely to say he’s the smartest of the lot…”
Cons: He’s still relatively new as the CEO of Apollo, and is said to be loving it. So he might be the one candidate to turn the job down.
Aside: If he is offered it and accepts it, there’s one person who could be absolutely furious. That is financier and sports-team owner Josh Harris, who was the co-founder of Apollo with Rowan and Leon Black. Harris expected to succeed Black as CEO, but was snubbed when Black stepped down as chairman following an investigation into his financial relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, as you’ve read about here. Black chose Rowan instead. Harris was livid and left Apollo. Black later sued Harris, alleging that Harris had waged a smear campaign around Black’s payments to Epstein and his extra-marital relationship with a women who sued him for sexual assault. Both cases were dismissed.
One of my sources ruminated on how Harris would feel if, after all this, Rowan not only left Apollo for the Treasury, but was able to put all his stock into a tax free trust, as he would be allowed to do. “Josh Harris will not be able to stand it,” said my source, who I presume, for whatever reason doesn’t much like Josh Harris. Gone are the days of genteel bankers, I guess.
2) Kevin Warsh, former governor of the Federal Reserve (Another disclosure: I know Kevin, and I like him a lot, too!)
Pros: He really wants it. He’s overtly political. We know what he thinks because he’s written a couple editorials in the Wall Street Journal. “He’s sufficiently ambitious that he’d likely agree to whatever Trump asked of him to be Treasury Secretary.” said one source. (They are like Mean Girls, my sources!)
He’s polished, sharp, handsome (which Trump likes). He’s married to a member of the Lauder family (that’s branding Trump can live with). He’s got the temperament. In terms of his background, he’s probably better suited to running the Federal reserve but since that job isn’t open for another 18 months, he could always do the Treasury job first.
Cons: He started out as a banker at Morgan Stanley, but has spent most of his career as an economist. Having said that, he’s spent the last five years working alongside the billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller. Says one source: “So he's talking to Stan every day about markets. And so I think he's pretty deep. I mean, Kevin would have an opinion on what's the value of the yen”
Even so, Trump may view him as more of an academic than a financier.
3) Scott Bessent: An investor who made his fortune running George Soros’s money, He was part of the Soros team who, infamously “broke the Bank of England” in the 1990s.
Pros: Like Warsh, he’s smooth, polished and he’s been overtly angling for the job. And, yes, he could do it.
He wrote Trump’s speech recently delivered to the New York Economic Club in which Trump said: “I am promising low taxes, low regulations, low energy costs, low interest rates, secure borders, low low low crime and surging incomes for citizens of every race, religion, color and creed.”
It seems he’s “bought into Trump’s story on tariffs” because he was recently on CNBC’s Squawk Box saying he would do whatever Trump asks.
Cons: One source - only one - thinks he wouldn’t get confirmed by the senate because he spent 20 years making money for Democratic benefactor George Soros. Howard Lutnick has tried to persuade Trump against him and Elon Musk has tweeted on X he thinks that of the two, Lutnick is the better candidate. "Bessent is a business-as-usual choice, whereas (Lutnick) will actually enact change,” wrote Musk.
Of course, you never know with Trump. These apparent disadvantages may wind up working to his advantage.
4) Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fizgerald and co-chair of the Transition Team.
Pros: He has the experience to do the job: Lutnick stepped up in a crisis when his firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, was obliterated during 9/11. He wasn’t in the office because he was dropping his son at school.
Cons: He has the wrong temperament. Described as a yeller and “a bit of jerk,” he also came under fire after 9/11 for stopping pay checks to his late employee’s four days after the towers fell. Further, Cantor Fitzgerald is considered primarily a trading firm, and the job of Treasury Secretary isn’t suited for a trader. He’s said to have irritated Trump by pushing too hard publicly for the job, and inserting himself too much into the conversation about the work on the transition. And hanging around too much. Plus Trump was pissed when he only recently discovered that the work of the transition has actually been done by one Cliff Sims, a Lutnick hire, but also the author of the Trump White House tell-all: Team of Vipers.
THE DARK HORSES
As I’ve mentioned here before: the Former US trade Robert Lighthizer - serious guy, tough on trade, hard worker. Is he high-profile enough?
Sen. Bill Hagerty. At this point Hagerty’s name has come up for several big jobs. But why would Trump want him out of the senate?
Whoever is chosen and accepts, my sources agree that the person has a tricky role on the horizon: namely controlling the national deficit, as well as ensuring competitiveness and open markets and economic growth at a time of nationalization.
So, if the past is prologue, let’s look at who Trump selected as the winner for The Apprentice, season one: Bill Rancic. Rancic was chosen because he is good-looking and he aced his final task which was to run a Trump golf course for a day.
Based on that rationale, any one of these candidates could probably do the job. Then again, Trump could go for someone else altogether.
We shall see.
Thanks, Marshall! I know.
Any questions you'd like me to ask Anthony Scaramucci?
Lutnick has been appointed as Commerce Secretary, which is great, as he would have been the worst choice for Treasury. Bessent would be excellent, as would Rowan, although I am pining still for Lighthizer