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Matt Peterson
@mattpeterson.bsky.social
4.7K followers 1.5K following 2.1K posts
Covering policymaking, economics, and financial markets for Barron’s. [email protected]
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Reposted by Matt Peterson
mcopelov.bsky.social
So currencies. Much medium of exchange. Very store of value.

Stablecoins are no more a replacement for dollars than Mexican or Argentine pesos were a replacement for dollars in the 1980s or 1990s. They're the equivalent of a fixed exchange rate peg with ever-present credibility/reserves questions.
November 26, 2025 at 3:45 PM
mattpeterson.bsky.social
Bitcoin makes up 5.6% of Tether's USDT? Yikes. www.ft.com/content/086f...
Tether gets junked by S&P
Collateral damaged
www.ft.com
November 26, 2025 at 3:42 PM
Reposted by Matt Peterson
status.news
Business Insider is abandoning its paywall and pivoting back to clicks this holiday season, Status has learned, as internal pressures mount and its subscription bet shows new cracks.

Details in @status.news: www.status.news/p/business-i...
Business Insider’s Paywall Backslide
The Axel Springer-owned outlet is pivoting back to clicks this holiday season, Status has learned, as internal pressures mount and its subscription bet shows new cracks.
www.status.news
November 26, 2025 at 2:44 AM
mattpeterson.bsky.social
Diplomacy!

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
SW: Well listen. I am going to tell you something. I think, I think if we can get the Russia-Ukraine thing solved, everybody’ll be jumping for joy. YU: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you need to solve only one problem. [laughs] SW: What? YU: Russian-Ukrainian war. SW: I know! How do we get that solved?
November 25, 2025 at 9:11 PM
mattpeterson.bsky.social
Scott Bessent on CNBC this morning made sweeping criticisms of the regional Fed presidents. One scenario often discussed among analysts is that a Trump-controlled Fed board could decline to reappoint all the presidents when their terms expire at the end of February.
Well, the other thing I'll tell you that I find very interesting is these regional presidents were supposed to be people from the district, and it was supposed to break the New York hold on the Reserve Banks. And we've got at least three, maybe four, the Reserve Banks, where people were hired from outside the district. They don't they don't even live in their district. They commute back to New York. So these are New Yorkers. They are going out into the country and then coming back on weekends. I'm not sure that's the way the Federal Reserve was designed.
November 25, 2025 at 3:42 PM
mattpeterson.bsky.social
ALT5 Sigma's stock is down 80% since the company entered into a partnership to invest in the Trump family-backed WLFI cryptocoin. When our reporter reached out to discuss the stock's fall, Barron's got a response from a defamation attorney.

Here's our story, by Joe Light.
Alt5Sigma’s Stock Is Down 80% After It Bought Into a Trump Family-Backed Cryptocurrency
The blockchain company purchased billions of crypto tokens issued by a company co-founded by Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump.
www.barrons.com
November 25, 2025 at 3:13 PM
mattpeterson.bsky.social
Nick Timiraos nicely illustrates the Fed chair’s power—less an autocrat than a tie-breaker. Q is whether the next chair will have the same capability www.wsj.com/economy/cent...
Allies of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell have laid the groundwork for him to push a rate cut through a divided committee at next month's meeting even though it could draw multiple dissents. The unusual level of division inside the Fed means that, to an even greater degree than usual, the final call rests with Powell. But Kaplan, who is now at Goldman Sachs | GS T T, also understood how an official who leans against a particular action could be persuaded to support it. During his own tenure, if there were times he was only slightly at odds with Powell, "if at all possible, I'm going to try to side with the chair, understanding that none of us are smart enough to know exactly the right decision."
November 25, 2025 at 12:44 PM
mattpeterson.bsky.social
Sheila Bair: "The administration is right to blame the Fed for the high costs of housing, but this is not because it has kept mortgage rates too high. It is because it kept them too low and for too long in years past"
Trump needs to tackle housing supply, not mortgage rates
A focus on cutting interest costs only fuels home price inflation, hitting working families
www.ft.com
November 23, 2025 at 2:00 PM
mattpeterson.bsky.social
Trump and Mamdani said they talked about Con Ed. Trump:

DJT: "We have to get Con Edison to start lowering the rates."
ZM: "Absolutely."
Stock chart of Consolidated Edison (ED), down sharply at the end of trading.
November 21, 2025 at 8:53 PM
mattpeterson.bsky.social
Walmart doesn't have stores in New York City.
November 21, 2025 at 8:39 PM
mattpeterson.bsky.social
Mamdani addresses tomorrow's meeting, says he and Trump were elected for similar reasons: “I know that for tens of thousands of New Yorkers, this meeting is between two very different candidates who they voted for for the same reason, they wanted a leader who would take on the cost of living crisis”
November 20, 2025 at 2:59 PM
Reposted by Matt Peterson
ericlipton.nytimes.com
NEW: As Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick drives billions of dollars in foreign payments to help build AI data centers in the US, his sons help run a company earning tens of millions in fees helping finance AI data centers. A NYT investigation. (Free link)

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/u...
Family Affair: Commerce Secretary’s Sons Cash In on A.I. Frenzy
www.nytimes.com
November 20, 2025 at 12:02 PM
Reposted by Matt Peterson
notthatadamlevine.bsky.social
Foreign students spent $55 billion last year, about a quarter of all foreign consumer expenditures in the US.
mattpeterson.bsky.social Matt Peterson @mattpeterson.bsky.social · 6d
The White House just blasted this out under the headline "Good News You May Have Missed"
🧑‍🎓 New foreign student enrollment at U.S. colleges and universities is down by 17% over last year: “American universities have suffered one of the sharpest ever declines in foreign enrollments in the face of tough policies from President Donald Trump, with the number of new international students falling 17 percent this year.”
November 19, 2025 at 9:46 PM
mattpeterson.bsky.social
Wrote a bit about Trump's Kennedy Center rant about Bessent and Powell. It matters that the president is explicitly directing the Treasury secretary to lower rates. Bessent has power here. www.barrons.com/livecoverage...
The 10-year Treasury is trading near 4.1%, down from 4.6% at the start of Trump’s term. But Trump is making it clear that he expects Bessent to go further. “The rates are too high, Scott, and if you don't get it fixed fast, I'm going to fire your ass,” the president said. His tone suggested he was joking about the firing. But where Powell and the Fed are concerned, nothing could be more serious.
November 19, 2025 at 8:58 PM
mattpeterson.bsky.social
The White House just blasted this out under the headline "Good News You May Have Missed"
🧑‍🎓 New foreign student enrollment at U.S. colleges and universities is down by 17% over last year: “American universities have suffered one of the sharpest ever declines in foreign enrollments in the face of tough policies from President Donald Trump, with the number of new international students falling 17 percent this year.”
November 19, 2025 at 8:14 PM
Reposted by Matt Peterson
annabower.bsky.social
The facts are complicated, but here’s a summary of what appears to have happened based on the filings and today’s hearing:
annabower.bsky.social Anna Bower @annabower.bsky.social · 7d
NEWS: During a hearing in federal court in VA, prosecutors confirmed that the operative indictment in the case against James Comey was never shown to or voted on by the entire grand jury before it was presented in open court.

Defense counsel argued that’s a complete bar to further prosecution
November 19, 2025 at 6:30 PM
mattpeterson.bsky.social
What is AI good for? Movin’ dirt. My brother’s robotics company continues to do actually useful work, and I love it. www.enr.com/articles/619...
Bedrock Robotics' technology-in a partnership with Sundt Construction-is being used to automate excavators' mass earth removal for site preparation of a 130-acre Southwest U.S. manufacturing facility supporting the domestic energy market. Bedrock's autonomous systems have moved more than 65,000 cu yd of earth and rock by loading human-operated articulated rock trucks with the same workflow used in manual operations-trucks stopping to be loaded by an excavator taking scoops from a stripped pile. The integration demonstrates commercial viability for autonomous construction, Bedrock says. The technology is now installed across multiple excavator models ranging from 20- to 80-ton machines on the large site, adapting its systems from compact units to large-scale earthmovers.
November 19, 2025 at 1:19 PM
mattpeterson.bsky.social
Elon Musk has made no discernible efforts to start the third party he promised, the Times reports www.nytimes.com/2025/11/18/u...
After Mr. Musk exited Washington — upset about the administration's domestic policy bill and humiliated by the withdrawn nomination of a top ally, Jared Isaacman, to lead NASA — he promised that he would start a third party to challenge Republicans. It would be called the America Party, he said, and on July 5, he told his more than 200 million followers that the America Party had been "formed." In truth, Mr. Musk then made no moves to do so. Even in the immediate aftermath of his angry pronouncements, Mr. Musk's friends detected in private conversations with him that he was not particularly aware of how expensive and complicated it would be to create a viable third party, according to four people who spoke with him at the time.
November 19, 2025 at 12:28 PM
mattpeterson.bsky.social
“Much as the United States offered nuclear technology in the 1950s to countries that agreed to use it peacefully, the Trump administration has discussed selling A.I. technology to countries that end conflicts, including Armenia and Azerbaijan, said two people familiar”
How Trump and Nvidia’s C.E.O. Became Partners on the International Stage
www.nytimes.com
November 19, 2025 at 12:22 PM
mattpeterson.bsky.social
Elon Musk is in attendance at tonight's U.S.-Saudi dinner with Trump and MBS, WH pool reports.
November 19, 2025 at 12:50 AM
mattpeterson.bsky.social
“The bill will be signed whenever it gets to the White House,” a senior White House official says, in the wake of the rapid passage by the Senate.
November 18, 2025 at 11:15 PM
mattpeterson.bsky.social
Meanwhile, the crypto crash continues to erase Trump family wealth. With DJT stock trading at all-time lows, the Trumps' stake is worth $5.3 billion less than its peak, Joe Light writes. www.barrons.com/articles/djt...
The Trump family’s holdings at their peak in mid-May 2024 were worth nearly $6.5 billion. Their value has fallen by more than $5.3 billion since then. DJT stock has repeatedly hit all-time lows over the past few trading days, falling as part of a broader meltdown in the crypto market. In August, Trump Media announced it had acquired $2 billion in Bitcoin and related securities, making it one of the largest “digital asset treasury” companies, similar to Michael Saylor’s Strategy, and tying its fate to the crypto market. Since then, the bet has turned sour. Bitcoin prices on Tuesday briefly dipped below $90,000, and despite a modest rebound the asset’s gains for the year have been wiped out.
November 18, 2025 at 6:23 PM
mattpeterson.bsky.social
Trump again floats the possibility of Scott Bessent as the next Fed chair, "but he’s not going to take the job. he refused," Trump says.

This of course raises the question why Trump would continue to raise the possibility of Bessent taking the job. If Trump insisted, would Bessent still refuse?
November 18, 2025 at 6:19 PM
mattpeterson.bsky.social
Trump on Jamal Khashoggi: "A lot of people didn't like that gentleman that you're talking about. And whether you like him or not, things happen."
November 18, 2025 at 5:46 PM
mattpeterson.bsky.social
A planned Larry Summers event on Wednesday at the Economic Club of NY has been "postponed until further notice," the club tells me. Summers is under scrutiny for his appearance in Jeffrey Epstein's emails. He was to appear with former CEA Chair Glenn Hubbard.
November 17, 2025 at 5:56 PM