Bessent Is Reverting to His Hedge Fund Ways With Argentina

[lostincalifornia]

You can take the man out of the hedge fund, but you can’t take the hedge fund out of the man. As I’ve mentioned here before, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — a long-time asset manager who made a living placing bets on foreign currencies — has taken his taste for speculation with him to the US government. In his management of Treasury issuance, he’s leaned into short-dated bills on a wager that rates will drop in the months or years to come. And now he’s getting American taxpayers invested in the future of Argentina, a notorious macroeconomic basketcase.

Could Bessent use his experience for the benefit of a regional political ally with limited costs to America? Perhaps. But his gamble is not without risk, and looks extremely unbecoming of a US Treasury secretary.

By and large, the justification for this intervention seems far more political than borne of a concern for regional economic stability. While Argentina is Latin America’s third-largest economy, it hardly registers as a blip in US trade (we get about 1% of our agriculture imports from them). Yet President Javier Milei, a pro-austerity iconoclast famous for carrying a chainsaw, has emerged as something of a political symbol for the MAGA movement.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-10-17/bessent-is-reverting-to-his-hedge-fund-ways-with-argentina?srnd=homepage-americas