If tax reform looks stalled, and we should find out in the next few weeks, is there any reason for Gary Cohn to stick around if he concludes he won’t be appointed Fed Chair? We wonder.
Odds he will replace Yellen are dropping like a stone on PredictIt. Down about 30 percent in August. Especially after his recent comments to the Financial Times,
Gary Cohn, the top White House economic official, said the Trump administration “must do better” in condemning neo-Nazis and white supremacists following the violent protests in Charlottesville this month that sparked one of the biggest controversies of Donald Trump’s presidency.
Mr Cohn, a Jewish-American who was president of Goldman Sachs before becoming head of the White House national economic council, told the Financial Times he faced “enormous pressure” to quit after the uproar over Mr Trump’s reaction to the clashes in the Virginia university city that left one woman dead. – FT, August 25
The President has rumored to still be fuming over these comments.
- …people close to the president said he is simmering with displeasure over what he considers personal disloyalty from National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, who criticized Trump’s responses to a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville on Aug. 12.
- The president has been quietly fuming about Cohn for the past week but has resisted dismissing him in part because he has been the face, along with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, of the administration’s tax-cut strategy. – Washington Post, August 31
Cohn has fallen from almost a certainty toreplace Yellen to 20 percent in the prediction markets.
Add this to our event risk checklist.
If the stock market begins to fret and tank over growing worries of Cohn’s future, we’ll, no doubt, expect a sweet tweet from the president expressing support for Mr. Cohn.
Welcome to the new markets. Is this Kafkaesque , or what?
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