U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent: Reporters Have Become Fed Stenographers, Wall Street Journal Reduced to Reporting Fed Gossip
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated that a highlight during Kevin Warsh's tenure at the Federal Reserve was watching stenographers disguised as reporters, such as the Wall Street Journal's Nick Timiraos, reduced to only reporting gossip behind the scenes of the Fed.
Bessent pointed out that these individuals cannot produce real economic or monetary policy analysis without being fed information, directly naming Timiraos as a "Fed mouthpiece."
The event has driven the market to reprice the Fed's communication transparency, with analysts and funds shifting from relying on internal leaks to independent data and public statements, putting pressure on traditional "mouthpiece" reporting and benefiting direct policy signals.
Source: Public Information
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Scott Bessent has previously criticized Jerome Powell's monetary policy, ethical issues, and banking regulation failures, advocating for Kevin Warsh to succeed as Fed Chair; Nick Timiraos has long been seen as a "Fed mouthpiece," with his reports often accurately predicting interest rate hikes and influencing market pricing.
In terms of capital pathways, Bessent aims to weaken the influence of traditional reporters and internal information channels by publicly naming them, motivated by a desire to reduce reliance on forward guidance and strengthen real-time judgments at each meeting; resources are shifting from Wall Street's reliance on "feeding" research budgets to more direct policy observation and independent modeling.
Similar cases can be seen in the past interactions between Fed Chairs and specific reporters (such as Bernanke with certain media), as well as the Trump administration's ongoing pressure on the media; the current phase is transitioning from "internal consensus guiding the market" to "public signals dominating."
Essentially, this represents a regulatory change: central bank communication is moving from reliance on informal channels to a stricter public framework, with the mechanism being that the new Chair's reduction of information feeding forces the market and media to rebuild independent analytical capabilities, lowering the pricing power of a single information source.
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- Without information feeding, stenographers are left with gossip.
- When mouthpieces fail, independent judgment has a premium.
- The higher the policy transparency, the lighter the role of reporters.