The question that controls the fate of the world:

Is Scott Bessent a traitor?

I don't mean in the typical left / right, “ewww, he does things differently than I would!,” but in the “literally working for the enemy” sense.

For those not familiar with his history, Scott Bessent was The Right Hand of George Soros for most of his career. When rich, famous people become rich and famous through certain accomplishments, they do not do this on their own. They have people doing the work for them. And the manager of George Soros's London office from which he broke the Bank of England and later the Bank of Japan, the man who did the research, the groundwork, and pulled off some of the trades of the century that made George Soros who he is today, was Scott Bessent.

After many years, Bessent left Soros for a few years to run his own firm, but wasn't wasn’t setting the world on fire on his own and so he came back to working for Soros, who was more or less retired from finance at this point. Scott Bessent's job, this time, was to manage Soros's family office. He was in charge of preserving and growing Soros's entire personal fortune. Understand that this is a position that requires flawless, blemish-free trust. Bessent had absolute power over every dime to George Soros's name.

Bessent held this position with absolute power over every dime to George Soros's name for five years, then wanted to go out on his own again and start a hedge fund. Some have called this a falling out between him and Soros, but I can find no contemporaneous mention of this in the financial press where is was very big news. In fact, Soros invested $2 billion in Bessent's new company, Center Square, which is an eye-watering sum of money for a new hedge fund. It was about 7% or 8% of Soros's entire net worth. Even for Soros, that's big money and a lot of eggs in one basket.

About ten minutes later, Bessent suddenly – and with no real explation for his change of heart – becomes a conservative. He starts going around giving speeches parroting right-wing talking points. And nobody sees this as weird or even slightly suspicious. As far as I can tell the entire GOP was like "omg we needed a prominent gay man to Speak Our Word, and we found one!" At this point, Bessent still has $2 billion of Soros's cash sitting in his accounts. The money was returned later, but after an initially agreed-upon investment period, which is normal for hedge funds. Business as usual. Soros didn't re-invest, but Bessent was a prominent Republican now and you can only stretch things so far.

This last week has been a roller-coaster of Stock Markets Go Up, Stock Markets Go Down. Every dollar lost is a dollar made somewhere else. These market moves were engineered by Trump's "420-D chess" tariff moves, they were predictable for those on the inside, and I'm just sitting here thinking that the man closest to what's left of Trump's ear right now is a man who made huge fortunes for George Soros on exactly this kind of extreme market volatility. I sit here and imagine what the George and Alex Soros would do with the kind of power that Scott Bessent has, and it would be more or less exactly this.

It's all speculation in my head. It could just be a huge coincidence. But I just can't help being suspicious. Especially because Soros's goal has been to take the United States down about 10 notches if not destroy it outright. Look at my last post. Capital markets are frozen in the US. The irony is that Trump ostensibly wants to move production back to the US, but the US is a debt-based economy, in order to build factories you need financing, and The Money behind financing doesn't want to invest in a country in the middle of a trade war with China that it will probably lose. It's very, very simple. The Money wants to invest in projects that will make more money for The Money. Minimal requirements for this are knowing what your costs and returns are, and in the middle of a trade war that's a pretty big problem.

Why do I say China will win? Isn't that just treason talk?

I say this because I know where the money is.

As I said before, the US is a debt-based economy. You need debt to Make America Great Again. And that's accpetable: it would be better if it wasn’t, but it’s not unworkable IF – and this is a huge IF – the economy is reasonably stable. But there is nothing more unstable than a trade war with a country that is both your biggest supplier, to the point where you can't even build many factories without their goods, and your biggest creditor.

It's not just corporations in the US that need debt to function: the US government does even more so. The government gets money by selling US Government Treasury Bonds, to investors, foreign governments, and / or the Federal Reserve. When they sell bonds to the Federal Reserve, this creates inflation, and we've seen quite a lot of it lately.

The problem is that the US government isn't the only organization that can sell US Government Treasury Bonds. The Chinese government can as well, because they've bought truly massive amounts of them over the years. If organizations want to buy US government debt, then the Chinese can undercut the US government on price. Not forever, but for longer than this trade war will last and that's the only thing that matters here. Sure, they’ll take a small loss on the trade, but it’s war and wars cost money. Trump can play the patriotism card like Presidents have done during wartime and get individuals to Invest In America, but MAGA doesn't have that kind of scratch and the people who do generally aren't impressed by anything other than hard ROI. This is doubly-concerning because Trump has shown exactly zero concern for bringing down the deficit, which is one key thing that might convince The Money to pay attention. In fact, when pushed on the matter by Thomas Massie, he lost his temper and showed extreme hostility to both Massie and the budget.

Meanwhile, what’s it like for the Chinese government? Yeah, they’re losing tons of money as well. But they have tons of money. And they have it in US dollars. They can use their stockpile of US dollars to keep their own industry afloat, dumping the production into the Yangtze River if they must, and every US dollar they spend twists the inflation knife on the US. All of this money the Chinese government has been soaking up over the decades has helped save the US from its stupidly inflationary behavior, also gives the Chinese government the power to undo and inflict that fiscal pain relief whenever it choses to. Think of it as a massive fiscal pain battery that’s been charging and charging and charging. Whoever owns that battery can decide to stop charging and unleash that power against us any time they want, and the owner of that battery is China. Nobody knows exactly how many US dollars the Chinese have (or they’re not saying), but it’s somewhere between $1.5 trillion and $2.5 trillion. Sure, they’ll take a loss on the trade, but it’s war and wars cost money. By my math, they have enough US dollars to play this game at least through the end of Trump’s fifth term.

China very clearly doesn’t want the trade war. They’re content with the status quo. They want to preserve their investments. But if Trump puts them in a position where they have to lose, then they absolutely can take the United States down first. Worst case is this turns into a shooting war, but even they they have money and the United States does not.

Internally, China is a totalitarian state. Totalitarian states rule based on fear. If China caves to Trump in a way they can’t spin internally as something they come out ahead on, it threatens their political system. This is absolutely unacceptable to them, a hard line they wll not cross. And anything other than an unambiguous win is unacceptable to Trump’s ego, a hard line he will not cross.

At this point, Trump has completely cornered himself. He needs massive amounts of capital, probably around 15 trillion of dollars give or take, to finance both the US government and the expansion of industry necessary to make his tariff war pay off. He’s created a circumstance that nobody with two brain cells to rub together wants to throw any money at, and he’s created a pointless war against an enemy that cannot afford to back down and can afford to win. The only way forward for Trump is to start running the printing presses at a pace that makes COVID look like a little weekend spending binge. Hello, hyperinflation, and that’s even without the Chinese dumping their US dollar reserves. Put the two together and it’s the fiscal equivalent of a nuclear strike, all without firing a shot.

The most likely scenario I see at this point is that Trump gets impeached, convicted, and thrown in prison, and whoever succeeds him signs a Treaty of Versailles-style absolute capitulation to the Chinese. They will own America. MAGA is completely discredited, along with the traitortarians who backed Trump, and all of Trump’s Executive Order reforms that he was too egotistical to run through congress will be not only be undone, but tied to his failures (“Theres Were the Policies of the Man Who Destroyed America!”). The masses will swallow this whole and take it as gospel.

And nobody knows this scenario better than Scott Bessent. In fairness, he’s a very smart guy and maybe he has some Over 9,000-D chess move he can pull out and turn this around. But I don’t see it. And neither does anybody else. The Money certainly doesn’t see it – all they see is a bunch of crazy – and The Money has all of the best financial brains that The Money can buy and, believe me, there is literally nothing they can’t afford.

So, is Scott Bessent a traitor working for George Soros to take America down hard from within, while making another fortune playing the stock market on the way out? It sounds outlandish even when I type it now. But it’s less crazy than Trump’s behavior, and that’s deeply concerning. Bessent knows what all of these moves do and not only is he allowing it, he appears to be driving it. I could be wrong, I hope I’m wrong, but at this point I simply can’t see it as anything other than the work of a traitor.