Last week, we learned what happens when traders start to get it in their heads that Gary Cohn is considering throwing in the towel on the smoldering pile of twisted wreckage that America is calling “the administration.”
In short: Wall Street doesn’t like the idea of Cohn bidding Trump adieu.
And that makes all kinds of sense because not only is Cohn a critical piece of the tax reform proposal, he’s also the frontrunner for Janet Yellen’s job.
I’m not 100% sure that everyone fully appreciates how important that latter bit is. Don’t forget, the next Fed Chair is going to have to figure out how to normalize the balance sheet and implicit in that is the notion that “heavy” will indeed “be the head”. Because in more ways than one, the fate of the entire financial universe rests on that normalization push.
So we can’t help but chuckle at the results of the latest National Association for Business Economics survey, which showed that nearly half of economists who don’t expect Yellen to serve another term believe that Cohn will be the man:
Note the dates on that survey: July 18- August 2.
Has anything notable happened since then that might change the calculus in terms of how likely it is that Gary Cohn will still be around when Yellen’s term is up?
Oh, that’s right…
Trump: Jefferson was a "major slave owner… are we going to take down the statue?… you're changing history, you're changing culture." pic.twitter.com/IIoIuxbKfK
— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) August 15, 2017
