Bulwark Takes - How Trump’s Treasury Secretary Crashed His Own Hedge Fund (w/ Marshall Brandt)

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent lost 90% of his hedge fund’s money and left Wall Street with one of the worst track records in the business. Tim Miller and Marshall Brandt take on how this so-called “financial expert” burned billions. Get 30% off your first order from Soul at https://GetSoul.com with promo code BULWARKTAKES.

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Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. But MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hey, everybody. Tim Miller from the bulwark here with my buddy Marshall Brandt of Anna Perna Funds. And we've been talking for a while, me and Marshall have, about how Scott Bessent, our Treasury Secretary, who kind of purports to be the most accomplished, I guess, our mainstream of this cast of clowns. Like, his actual track record as an investor is pretty

shitty. And I felt like on this day, on the heels of a story from Politico about how he like almost threw down in a Georgetown club. Now, we wanted to demonstrate some fists of fury against Bill Pulte and following the interview with Meet the Press, where he bragged on his career as a hedge fund manager, that we might get some benefit from Marshall's expertise. So thank you for coming on. Yeah, absolutely. Just first from our compliance department, I'm appearing as an individual.

This doesn't represent the opinions of Annapurter Funds, not investment advice. We're not open to the public. All that kind of good stuff. No investment advice. Okay. No investment advice. Or some people to stay away from, potentially. You know.

Potentially. Take it as you wish, though. Take it as you wish, everybody. All right. Well, just this little backstory, you know, you're talking about your work. You had some familiarity with Bessent, I guess, before he was Treasury Secretary. Is that? Yeah, we're in the same world.

We both trade global macro. I mean, that's what he traded. And he had a pretty good run. And he's very reminiscent. this and of a lot of guys. I mean, trading global macro is very difficult. What does that mean? Talk to me like a child, global macro.

Yeah, sure. Should we trade currencies, commodities, anything under the sun? But, you know, I mean, it's not everyone who can establish a position of the Thai bot, for example. And, you know, anyone could sort of set up a hedge fund and passively indexed to S&P. But you make these really big bets on rates, fixed income, inflation. And, you know, he worked for some of the best. Soros is probably the best of all times, maybe Drunken Miller's second. He worked under those two guys, and he has the same profile that's seen a lot in fund management where, you know, you're a good PM and he gets spun out with your own fund.

And he wants like $4.5 billion. I feel for the guy a little bit. I mean, I don't know how exactly, you know, you put $4.5 billion to work on a Thursday. But he was down 50% of the time he was there. and the golden rule from Soros and Druckenmiller, his mentors, would you never lose money? I mean, at least you can put it in 10-year treasuries. So 50% of his years were down. And, I mean, I don't see any way to view him as anything but a failed hedge fund manager.

So he started with $4.5 billion of assets under management. He shut down the fund with $577 million. So he lost 90% of his capital. That's down. Now, I'm not that great at math, but $4.5 billion. to $577 million. That seems bad. If that happened to our economy, for example, not as a Treasury Secretary, that would yield

a lot of pain. A lot of pain, a lot of pain. And it's interesting because he's sort of touted as the guy to calm Wall Street that the dear leader is not going to ruin everything, right? Yeah. But there's not a lot of evidence he was so good on Wall Street. Let's take a listen to what Besson said about himself in his investment career yesterday, as referenced, and explored a little bit more. You're quoting Goldman Sachs.

Yes, Goldman Sachs, correct. I made a good career of trading against Goldman Sachs. Okay. So he made a lot of money betting against Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs out there taking this radical view that the tariffs are actually being paid by American companies and consumers almost entirely, which is just totally conventional wisdom. I mean, you can tell me if there is any reason to not think that is the case for people that put their money with their mouth is, so to speak, on these sorts of bets. Bess then is saying he's going against that, saying that he does not think that the consumers

or companies are paying for it. And his evidence for that, he doesn't have any, except for the fact that he says Goldman Sachs has been wrong a lot and he made money on them in the past. That seems like bullshit to me. Goldman Sachs, looking stark today is trading an all-time high. They're considered the, you know, world's leading thought leaders and investment space. I mean, I think that's a weird flex to make in the first place. I mean, you might want to say something like, you know, I really believe in this tariff phenomenon.

But we actually, we know he doesn't. I got an investor letter of his where he talks about how tariffs are going to be incredibly inflationary. I mean, he actually bet on that when he was running a hedge front, that tariffs would be inflationary. So I don't even know what he's talking about on that way. Yeah. I guess the question is when you look at somebody like that, like, do we think that he is just like desperate for this position, wants to have it and was excited to get it? Obviously, he competed with nutlick and others for it and got it. And maybe he's figuring, I don't know, maybe the Supremes will bail me out on this and they'll like overturn the tariffs and I'll be able to like kind of have an excuse for why this.

and happen and that way I won't get crossways with Mr. Trump? Or like, do you feel like, is there a cohort of people that are true believers that this is a good economic program right now? Like, what do you think is happening? Not that I'm aware, but I mean, I think one of the big questions we've been asking ourselves, everyone's been asking ourselves, why is the market holding up like this? I mean, just beyond Besson, the questioning of the independence of the Fed. And the answer is that, you know, if you go back to what good history, um, When governments transform themselves from, you know, democracies to autocracies, the first few years are pretty good. When you go from a completely free market capitalist system that we had on like January the 19th to a hybrid state capitalist model, the equity turns are pretty good.

You know, who didn't have a great depression? I mean, I hate to get this dark. Right. But who didn't have a great depression, you know, Germany? Nazi Germany. Now, the stock market went to zero. But I think that, you know, you look at Turkey, for example, it's up, you know, 5x. The stock market is up 5x since the pandemic. But the inflation rate is 32%. The interest rates are 44% and the currency is down by 90%. And in the United States, we've seen the same thing. So your stocks, if you're just indexed in the S&P this year, not up in dollar adjusted terms, inflation just the term. In fact, the S&P is up exactly, as of the close of today, is up exactly year-to-date with the dollars down. So you have three basic choices in investing, currencies put in cash, equities, and bonds. And so I think this market is going to experience much what Turkey did and Hungary did when it comes to there was initial sugar rush.

and it's been sort of downhill ever since. Now, I don't want people to run out and sell everything based on that, but there could be a period they were headed into with the non-independent Fed where the stock market just goes vertical because the interest rate is so low, but we know what happens when that happens, and that's inflation. That all makes sense. I'm wondering if what you think about this, and you're like kind of monitoring all the stuff closer to me,

so it's maybe just made my impression is right, accurate, I don't know. Like, Trump has been at least extremely solicit, and, like, decently good to, you know, a lot of the biggest, you know, the S&B 10 companies, right? Like, you have all these big tech companies that are there at the White House. They all are sitting on a huge balance sheets, right? Like, they're all doing well. Trump's not targeting them. There's no reason to think that they have, like, deep threats.

And then they're on the AI companies on top of that. And, like, the one area, maybe the three areas where this administration is, like, actually focused on cutting red tape and making sure investment goes into that. that is AI, crypto, and private prisons, right? So if you have the AI companies and the S&P 10, right, like maybe isn't that bringing everybody up, right? You know what I mean? Is that maybe possible? Yeah, of course. And there's no doubt that across the world, sovereign wealth funds, pension funds abroad, investors abroad, there's a deep belief that America has these 10 companies that none of the rest of the world can replicate. And no amount of authoritarian creep in the

United States government is going to take away potentially, at least for now, with the profitability of Microsoft and Nvidia and all that other kind of stuff. But I got to say, when you got the ATF, who I guess couldn't find enough alcohol, tobacco, and firearms to bus, going down to busting a Korean plant in Georgia and hauling off their workers, we're trying to do a trade deal with Korea. We've had a trade deal in place with Korea. By the way, here's the lesson from Korea. they had a January 6th or present. They had a guy who declared martial law last December. They tried him.

They put him in jail. And guess how much their stock market is up this year? Like 40%. So they actually went through with getting rid of their problem person and then the best performing stock market in the world. Yeah. The only reason I know about that is because this is a ban and obsessive. Bannon loved the January sexer guy in Korea.

So he would like mention all the time on the podcast. He's going to jail for a really long time. It's kind of sad that the Korea and Brazil are the advanced democracies that figure out how to handle their coups better than us. What work takes is sponsored by Seoul. If you're struggling to switch off at night, let me tell you, souls out of office gummies help me relax, quiet my thoughts, and fall asleep at night naturally. Just the right balance of CBD and THC to ease me to a restful night.

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the South Korean government announced Sunday. So this is such a crazy story. Again, when you talk about why business owners should be chilled in a lot of different industries. It's like they were trying to build a plant here that was going to hire American workers. That was the fucking point. It was going to be American workers in Georgia

working at this plant. They're building it. And like now we've had this raid. And who the hell knows? Maybe it'll just sit there for a while. the icing on the cake is that the president insinuated technology transfer. What do we hate about China and the way they do business for our companies? Technology transfer.

You can come do business with us, but we must be able to steal the technology that you're using. Right. And so the president's response, a quote of his, was, it's fine that they come work here, but they've got to teach our workers how to do it. Yeah. Which is exactly what you would hear from Xi. China. Yeah.

I mean, it's verbatim. technology transfer. So yeah, and then these so-called trade agreements where you've got, I mean, basically, I have to wonder what they look like because you got Bess in the room sitting there going, we're going to self-impose a tax on your goods. Are you okay with that? I mean, there's no, there's no negotiation. And they say, we'll invest $500 billion like the Japanese or whatever. That's a third of their GDP. They're never going to do that. They're never going to do that, particularly not after, you know, the ATF has time to put all their workers in jail. And so, I mean, is my outlook bullish for the United States economy? No. I mean, the appointment

figures are bad. Tariffs are bad, et cetera. But, but you're fighting the tape right now if you're trying to short the United States. And I think that's because we are heading into that first, you know, inaugural phase, it's called one to two years, where these authoritarian governments do really well. Well, we'll see what the viewers and listeners think about this. I was going to ask you about Howard Nutlick, but I want to get feedback on our Scott Besson analysis. And then we'll let you get prepared and looking at the track record of him and his children that have not taken over his company or now, I guess, kind of betting against the tariffs a little bit. Last thing on Bessent, anything, do you feel like you could take him, you know, if he watches this video and he starts threatening you

in a, in a, you know, he's pretty tall. You can take him. He is tall. Yeah, I was at a cocktail same for the more time. He's pretty tall. He lives in a Barbie house, though, on the other's hand. Yeah, that's true. That's true as well.

By the way, have you seen his spouse with him ever? I haven't yet. I think they were there at the, at the confirmation, because he's got those two older kids, too. I believe, if I'm going from memory, I believe they were around the husband and kids at, at the confirmation hearing, but not lately. I haven't seen him really.

Not like Pete and Chaston, no. No, no, you know, he's going on to Chaston FaceTime or like some of the other cabinet spouses like Pete Higgs us, wife, third wife. I think she has portraits of her now up in the Department of War. I almost said Department of Defense, Department of War, if her portrait is up. So anyway, all right? This thing wasn't so scary. It'd be hilarious, right? I mean, the thing you're about to talk about, the fight in the bar owned by half owned by guys.

Oh, yeah, let's talk about this. So they're at this club. All right. topic because you have good insight on this there at this club ostensibly all the maga guys were like you know oh these elites in dc they don't care about you they just want to go to their georgetown cocktail parties they get in and now the first thing they do is they want to throw georgetown cocktail parties of their own so they have some club now um that's owned by well you you you explain that are they foreigners are they yeah no the guys i mean he was born in

pakistan i believe but uh just look at his wikipedia i mean he's he is didn't do deep dive don't know the guy Yeah, sure. He was involved in a SPAC, which is one of these special acquisition companies, very in vogue. Chamoth Palapitia, the guy from All-N podcast, did three of them. Most of them lost 90% or 100% of their value. I invested in one of those ones that lost a bunch of value. I should have been listening to you, not Chamath back then.

But, you know, I was bored as COVID. I just kind of was trying to catch the wave. A lot of people made silly money on these things. But they didn't fare so well. But the co-owner of this Grift Club, it's called the Executive Club, where you can buy access for half a million dollars to this administration. The co-owner is involved with Donald Jr. in a SPAC. Then when you have a SPAC, you just get this blank check. It's a whole thing sounds kind of crazy because it is.

You get this blank check and you've got to go find a company, but you can't announce the company that you tend to buy. You have to go find the company or send the money back. And the company they decided to buy was called Grab a Gun. Grab a gun? grab a gun yeah a online seller of firearms and that's who's joint owner of this this club and he's the one who apparently had to calm big scott down when he got in the fight with the sort of RFK junior of the Pulte family go Pulte I mean the Pulte family is pretty upstanding group of individuals they've got an incredible home building company but the sort of black you know the the RFK Jr. of that

family's Bill Pulte. P.S., can you name any previous federal housing authority guy? No. No. No. Cannot. No. No. For good reason. It's odd in this administration how people who, you know, you could never even knew the function of what they were doing or playing such sort of a big role. But I think it's really key. What was the source of the fight? You made me look bad in front of the dear leader. Yeah, right. you know and that goes back to when he was hedge fund guy he was good when he had somebody looking over his shoulders best it was yeah but now that he's working for someone else or whatever he's mad because he's made to look bad in front of the president and i think it gives

you an amazing insight into how his administration functions yeah and his insecurity so just uh just curious um since you know you've maybe analyzed it how's that uh how's the grab a gun spec going the Donald Trump and that guy invested in. It's down 50%. So better than Besson's investment. All right. Well, anyway, for folks that don't remember, we'll just put this back up on screen.

This was all started when you sent me this graph here from Convergence Inc. Looking at Besson's asset under management. And it goes, and as a hedge fund manager, typically only people would draw money when you're not doing well. Hopefully that's not the way our economy goes.

Marshall, thank you so much, man, for doing this. of funds. By the way, I want to let you know, you were the second podcast I ever listened to it. The second one you ever listened to? Ever listened to you. I skipped the whole podcast thing.

Well, it was the first one who beat me. So it was James Carver's podcast. I listened to one episode, and they were like, he was like, y'all want to listen to somebody who's me, me, go to the bulwark. And this was in COVID in 2020. And that's how I found you guys. And I've been a Bullwark Plus member ever since. and would encourage anyone to sign up for it.

We appreciate that very much. Look at this. A successful investor wants you to become a bullet plus member. So do that. Subscribe to the feed. We'll see you all soon. Peace.