16 सितंबर 2025

"Treasury secretaries dating back to Alexander Hamilton have a history of dueling."

Quipped the Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, quoted in "Scott Bessent invokes deadly Hamilton-Burr duel when asked about threat to punch Bill Pulte in ‘f–king face’" (NY Post).

And here's the full punch-you-in-your-fucking-face quote: “Why the fuck are you talking to the president about me? Fuck you. I’m gonna punch you in your fucking face."

63 टिप्‍पणियां:

mccullough ने कहा…

Free throw contest will settle it.

Mike (MJB Wolf) ने कहा…

You didn't expect a Team of Rivals to to always be nice did you?

Iman ने कहा…

Lisa Cook is alleged to have committed mortgage fraud. She doesn’t have the decency to resign, so prosecution is even more fitting.

Iman ने कहा…

Don’t care about the squirrels…

narciso ने कहा…

that was a very clever line,

Dave Begley ने कहा…

I saw it in real time. Funny.

Becky Quick of CNBC says Bessent is her favorite guest to interview. "You always answer my questions."

Scott Bessent is a GREAT Treasury Secretary. He's fully aligned with Trump's policies and he is executing them superbly.

For those who don't know, Trump and Bessent are going to get Fannie and Fredie out of conservatorship and take them public. Some of Uncle Sam's stock will go into the new US Sovereign Wealth Fund. This is a huge deal and I'm betting that Bessent will get this done this year.

Fannie and Freddie will be a legacy project for both Trump and Bessent.

Just an old country lawyer ने कहा…

My, my! I do admire a manly gay man. Pistols for two, coffee for one.

narciso ने कहा…

kind of a wink and nod, to that silly piece of politico trash,

Dave Begley ने कहा…

I watched JD Vance host the Charlie Kirk show. He interviewed a number of WH people including the Chief of Staff. All of them recounted how key Charlie was to both winning the election (young people voting for Trump) and putting the Cabinet together. He was at Mar-a-Lago during the transition and was a real force.

Bessent said that Charlie helped him get his job.

I had no idea how influential Kirk was and how close he was to the President and Vice President.

The interview was nice as the guests all called JD, "Mr. Vice President."

RCOCEAN II ने कहा…

What is it with these old geezers threatening physical violence? Bessent is 63 and he's spent his whole life yakyakyaking and pushing paper - he's not going to fight anyone.

These types always talk tough too. Fuck this, fuck that. Biden was the same way. An old fart who couldn't ride a bike and he's threatening to beat people up behind the bleachers.

Unless you're young and in the Marine Corps or in a locker room just stop with the profanity and tough guy talk. Cause you come off as a clown.

narciso ने कहा…

this man is the financial john wick, he wouldn't need to yell, only in the prog fan fic does that make sense,

narciso ने कहा…

just like the whole General Flynn-Kislyak dialogue, was nowhere near the way it was described in the Post

mezzrow ने कहा…

Inciting himself to violence. Careful, there.

narciso ने कहा…

now Bessent is the good cop, and Pulte the bad cop, see how this works, the glove and the hammer,

Lazarus ने कहा…

The stereotype was that gay men spend a lot of time looking at themselves in the mirror. Sure, they were practicing de Niro's "You talkin' to me!?" scene until they got it right.

Howard ने कहा…

What is the Got Milk? commercial

Lance ने कहा…

For those who don't know, Trump and Bessent are going to get Fannie and Fredie out of conservatorship and take them public.

Not a great idea. From Arnold Kling:

"The billionaires who scooped up Freddie and Fannie stock after the firms were taken over by the government were not in any way contributing capital. They were making a purely political bet that some day the government would restore the firms to their status of private profits, socialized risk. With the Trump Administration, the handful of investors are getting their wish, making a fortune at the expense of the American taxpayer."

Big Mike ने कहा…

And here's the full punch-you-in-your-fucking-face quote: “Why the fuck are you talking to the president about me? Fuck you. I’m gonna punch you in your fucking face."

Just as with the trans people, gay men should not be allowed access to firearms.

Lance ने कहा…

It's time to cut Fannie and Freddie loose. Completely privatize them. No more subsidies, no more bailouts. If some billionaires get even richer in the process, I'm okay with that.

But Trump and Bessent aren't doing that. They're going back to the bad old days, where Fannie and Freddie risk is federalized and profits are privatized.

narciso ने कहा…

Now Lutnick is really old school, I would believe him saying these things, but Bessent is white shoe, silver stocking sort,

Big Mike ने कहा…

Note to Scott Bessent. That Hamilton-Burr duel didn’t work out so well for Hamilton.

narciso ने कहा…

Fannie and Freddie were underwater because they enabled the subprime fraud created by the CRA revisions, and a little eye of newt from the Justice Department,

narciso ने कहा…

its a joke son (foghorn leghorn)

Paddy O ने कहा…

Something like this?

Readering ने कहा…

Finally watched Hamilton, which is playing in cineplexes. Did not know his oldest son was killed in a duel a few years before him. Strange times then. And his wife lived another 50 years.

n.n ने कहा…

Scalpels at 10 yds, would lean into a socially forward Choice.

Dave Begley ने कहा…

There is a Dem cabal that wants to keep Fannie and Freddie as is. The Twins were the source of jobs and campaign cash for the Dems. Giant grift. Jamie Gorelick was a prime example.

GRW3 ने कहा…

As a gay man at 63, he may well have needed pugilistic skills to protect himself.

narciso ने कहा…

most of that money, ended up in stock by backs, very little refloated the portfolios of underwater bansk

Dave Begley ने कहा…

Trump, Bessent, Lutnick and Pulte all want the Twins out of conservatorship. It will happen.

narciso ने कहा…

there may be a hawaian judge who gets in the way,

victoria ने कहा…

Dave Begley, I hope not. So we are all now reduced to fighting duels? Stupid and childish.

Yancey Ward ने कहा…

After the implosion of 2008-2009, the two GSEs should have been wound down and discontinued. Both represent the socialized allocation of credit on the back of the taxpayers whether or not they are public or private entities.

rehajm ने कहा…

I'm with DB- Bessent is great. Kind of funny he went all gay guy cat fight at 63...

...and the Freddie Fannie thing is a good idea. Any of you fossils remember Peter Lynch at Fidelity Magellan? He wrote all those folksy investments books about if you like Cinnabons at the mall invest in Cinnabon, if your wife likes Leggs panty hose invest in Leggs, if your kids like Disney movies invest in Disney...well, I'm getting to it- all Lynch's alpha came from Fannie and Freddie. Take those out of Magellan he was a piker during his Magellan tenure. Give him full credit for picking them but a very different story than the legend...also, some of you fossils with a retirement account prolly had some Magellan mojo somewhere or other up in there. You're the rich billionaire's what profited, too...

narciso ने कहा…

no that was warren buffett, the real life mogul from network

narciso ने कहा…

now jim rogers he was a fake and a half

narciso ने कहा…

there are so many frauds out there, like turbo tim, like jim corzine et al,

n.n ने कहा…

The expression is scalpels at 10 paces.

narciso ने कहा…

hank paulson was perhaps the worst, except for the likes of tim geithner,

Kai Akker ने कहा…

Ha ha.... but, truthfully, kinda dullsville stuff. Yet here is the Fed at the hard place. Feed me, feed me, feed me! says Wall Street. If they're not happy, a selloff would produce the most dangerous challenge to MAGA. The toppiness has built for five years, so it isn't Trump's doing, but all his claims and bluster have left him owning whatever happens now.

Quaestor ने कहा…

A tempest in a very small teapot, like the one I use in my office microwave. It holds one and maybe a third's worth of a mug of tea -- disappointing but practical. If my teapot were the next size larger, I'd do nothing but drink tea -- just like this story, something to garner clicks. If there were more like this, we would do nothing but click as if we were the sort of people who hang suspended over every ludicrous Taylor Swift tidbit, or encounter her gawd-awful caterwauling willingly. But I digress...

The most interesting bit of that entire page was the 19th-century lithograph illustrating the Hamilton-Burr duel. What drew my eye was Hamilton's pose, bent backward and falling, his left hand on his forehead. Was he shot in the head? I looked that up. No, Burr shot Hamilton in the abdomen. A head shot would probably have killed Hamilton outright or at least rendered him comatose. In fact, he lingered for more than a day, probably in agony. So, why the melodramatic oh, my head pose? Ignorance? Bowdlerism? Artistic license? It's more likely the artistic convention of the day, i.e., visual shorthand for this guy is a goner.

More historically accurate is this engraving showing the victim clutching with his left hand at the approximate site of the wound, the lower right abdomen above the hip. In the background, we see the Hudson River and New York City in the distance.

Even better is
this statuary pair in the Museum of American Finance (bet Inga didn't know that existed). These are life-sized pieces that depict the duelists as recognizable individuals, based on contemporary portraiture. Hamilton is shown at the instant just before the shots took flight, wearing his spectacles as witnesses attest. Even the distance between the sculptures is approximately correct. So, hurrah for art that doesn't leave us dumber than before.

Smilin' Jack ने कहा…

Interesting sequential posts here today:

"Treasury secretaries dating back to Alexander Hamilton have a history of dueling."
Quipped the Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, quoted in "Scott Bessent invokes deadly Hamilton-Burr duel when asked about threat to punch Bill Pulte in ‘f–king face’" (NY Post).”

And here's the full punch-you-in-your-fucking-face quote: “Why the fuck are you talking to the president about me? Fuck you. I’m gonna punch you in your fucking face."

Followed by

"There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society. We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech."
Said Pam Bondi (USAG).

Hmmm….

Lance ने कहा…

Here's President Trump writing about taking Fannie and Freddie "public". This is from Truth Social:

I am working on TAKING THESE AMAZING COMPANIES PUBLIC, but I want to be clear, the U.S. Government will keep its implicit GUARANTEES, and I will stay strong in my position on overseeing them as President.

He and Bessent aren't planning to "privatize" these companies all, they're just selling the equity (and thus the profits). The federal government will remain on the hook when these companies fail.

Instead the President and Treasury Secretary should completely privatize Fannie and Freddie: no more government ownership or obligations.

john mosby ने कहा…

Floor traders are pretty macho and have a duelling culture of fistfights when trust has been broken. Bessent was apparently never a floor trader, but maybe that culture trickled upwards to the desks where he did work at investment banks. It's not all quants calculating probabilities - you still have to sell the deal to the bosses who can authorize it, and if some other wanker badmouths you in order to sell his deal instead, I could see some violence ensuing. CC, JSM

Aggie ने कहा…

Much ado about nothing, dahling.

mindnumbrobot ने कहा…

I like the cut of his jib.

Earnest Prole ने कहा…

I do admire a manly gay man.

Compare and contrast:

“Fuck you. I’m gonna punch you in your fucking face.” (Scott Bessent)

“Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi, or I'll sock you in the goddamn face and you'll stay plastered.” (William F. Buckley, Jr)

Skeptical Voter ने कहा…

Croissants in hand at 0530 on the shore of the Potomac. These bozos will have a duel.

n.n ने कहा…

Pin the tail on the donkey?

buwaya ने कहा…

I was instrumental in getting coffee service at work (the whole building) for nearly 20 years. It was later cancelled as a cost cutting move, the kind that new VPs love, where all you have to do is cancel a contract. Since then the place has abounded with personal percolators and microwaves. Worse coffee, more clutter, more time wasted impacting productivity.
I retired very early in 2020, so work from home (which I started the systems for 23 years ago) has made it all moot I suppose.

buwaya ने कहा…

I always thought there should be a legal cutout for a "Thunderdome" (as in the old Mad Max movie) that would license hand to hand combat in a given arena, with no legal or civil consequences.

john mosby ने कहा…

Buwaya: Any good fights erupt over coffee conflict? "If you unplug my Mr Coffee again, I'll punch you right in the nose!" etc? CC- JSM

n.n ने कहा…

If not pin the tail on the donkey, perhaps a wack a piñata with a rubber chicken.

buwaya ने कहा…

Not aware of fights, no. But my contacts were almost exclusively engineering/technical, who are adult professionals.
Personal drama was always at a minimum. I cant say as much about other lines of work. Stress related consequences were illnesses, heart attacks, depression and a couple of suicides.

Political Junkie ने कहा…

The NY Post story made me curious and I went to Wiki.
Wow.
His mom was married 5 times. Normally it is the man with all the marriages.My dad, the SOB, had 4.
His father went bankrupt on bad RE investments.
An uncle was caught up in Abscam.
Considered Naval Academy, but decided against because he did not want to hide his sexual orientation.
Protege of George Soros.

Wow.

Jamie ने कहा…

So, I imagine this is now a thing in all the cities, but in case it isn't, I will describe. Houston has a small-theater troupe that performs "Drunk Shakespeare." No matter the play they're performing, it ends up a comedy. The shtick is that one member of the troupe takes 3 shots of tequila (actually mezcal is what the young woman took at the show I just attended) right before beginning, followed by two more during the show at the behest of a couple of audience members. Some form of hilarity ensues.

How is this relevant? Well. The play I saw was Romeo and Juliet, so of course there's a duel. But the drunk actor "made" everyone trade in their blades for sex toys at the beginning of the show, so the Tibalt/Mercutio duel involved the biggest dildo I've ever seen and... something else with a jiggly bit, the likes of which I've never seen. I was bemused.

Some parts were LOL worthy, and one player (it happened to be the guy playing Mercutio AND the friar AND some other parts) was so kinetic that he stole every scene he was in - watching him brandish that giant dildo in stage slow motion was one of the LOL moments.

john mosby ने कहा…

Jamie: excellent! I was thinking one way to cool down the violence was to have people duel with the green dildos that are being thrown at sports games. You beat me to it! CC, JSM

mikee ने कहा…

I, for one, give Bessent at least 3 to 1 odds against Pulte in a bout of pugilistic exuberance. Heck, Bessent has a longer reach, for one thing. He also knows that public airing of grievances with coworkers extinguishes the issue in most cases. Further, having cut off this Pulte backchannel dissent and disparagement, Bessent deters many others from trying similar shenanigans against him.

Matt ने कहा…

That's a great quote. I can see Elon wearing a t- shirt with that on it. I'd buy the shirt, too.

Deep State Reformer ने कहा…

If I remember my history. a Federalist cat's paw media outlet at Hamiltons's behest put out the rumor that Burr had a carnal relationship his own daughter. IOW Burr was engaged in incest. A genuinely massive insult on so many levels, and neither the Feds nor Hamilton was willing to back down nor recant. And even then among the gentlemenly political class that kind of breach is just not going away. The prospect of bleeding out laying face first on a wet sand bar just so you can talk shit about your opposition is a lot scarier than big noisy expensive lawsuit. Just saying. Adam Schiff, Tim Kaine, Van Hollan take note.

Josephbleau ने कहा…

“n.n said...
Scalpels at 10 yds, would lean into a socially forward Choice.”

No, shotguns at ten paces should be the selection of arms.

Josephbleau ने कहा…

That would deter all but the serious

Josephbleau ने कहा…

38 revolvers at five feet with permission to re fire would work too.

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