As of this writing, Donald Trump’s still undecided on who’ll run Treasury in his second coming as leader of the free world.

One person who won’t be (running Treasury) is Howard Lutnick. And that’s a good thing as far as some nervous market participants are concerned.

Lutnick’s another in the long list of Trump friends-turned Trump sycophants. He’d probably choose a different word, but he’s co-chair of the transition team, he’s always with Trump these days and he’s “full-MAGA,” as it were.

Lutnick’s no-qualms approach to his old friend sets the Cantor chief apart from some of his Wall Street brethren who, even if they’re guarded about it in public, harbor reservations aplenty about a second term for a man who presents himself, however disingenuously, as the antithesis of a neoliberal world order in which Wall Street generally thrived.

Elon Musk backed Lutnick for Treasury over Scott Bessent who, despite being hugely white and hugely rich, counts as a diversity pick in Trump world by virtue of being a happily-married gay man.

The issue with Lutnick at Treasury was straightforward: He’s a maverick of sorts, and he really doesn’t have a lot of Street cred. Cantor’s its own thing. And Howard’s his own man. That’s great in many respects (I’m my own “thing” and also my own man), but some worried that making a maverick with a f-ck-off streak Treasury Secretary would be about like… well, like putting Donald Trump in the White House.

Lutnick’s got everything you’d expect from a financier Trump’s populist side would adore: Howard’s a “coiner” (note that Cantor provides custody services to Tether), he likes a “good” SPAC (Cantor was behind Rumble’s deal), he supports tariffs and so on. More importantly, he was once a guest on The Apprentice and he has no government experience whatsoever. So, a perfect fit for a Trump cabinet post.

And yet, Trump has another side which likes to pretend he’s respectable in a high society sense — that he somehow wasn’t the D-lister everyone knew him to be before he became president. That side’s a sucker for people like Steve Mnuchin and Gary Cohn. And that side wanted to pick Bessent or maybe Kevin Warsh for Treasury. Markets were hoping that side would prevail, and it did: Trump on Tuesday said Lutnick will get Commerce, not Treasury.

Market angst around Lutnick’s Treasury bid was visible in bonds if you were looking hard enough, and early reports suggesting Trump decided to give Howard a different post served as a “justification for vol-selling” earlier this week, Nomura’s Charlie McElligott wrote, noting that markets delivered a “swift rebuke” to Trump when it appeared he might be leaning towards Lutnick, as opposed to a “safe pick” in Warsh, who Charlie noted is a free-trade advocate.

Of course, Warsh is best known as a former Fed official who very nearly got the top job in 2018, just before Trump settled on Jerome Powell. If Warsh loses out to Bessent (or one of the other two “safe” picks on Trump’s short list for Treasury), it’d be the second time in half a dozen years Kevin almost, but not quite, stepped into Janet Yellen’s shoes.

As Charlie went on to note, the best outcome for Wall Street is probably Warsh at Treasury and Bessent in the advisory role once occupied by a pack of Merit Ultra Lights wearing a Gordon Gekko costume. “At least that’s the ‘trial balloon’ leaked to solid-enough reviews so far,” McElligott went on.

As far as Lutnick at Commerce, what do you want? Not that, ideally, but it could be worse? That’s a question. I really don’t know. His predecessor was Wilbur Ross, who didn’t exactly present as a tough guy. At one point, Wilbur — bless him — described a bushel of dates the Saudis gifted him as “kind gesture, from the heart.”

Lutnick’s going to push the tariffs, and champion Trump’s economic populism in general, but that was going to be the policy either way, so I’m not sure it matters all that much who the messenger is. As Bloomberg innocently noted, “the Commerce Department is also the parent agency of the BEA and the Census Bureau.” So Lutnick will technically be in charge of the data and the Census now, which… well, I don’t want to go there unless it’s necessary.

For now, it’s enough for markets that Treasury will apparently be in safe hands, or anyway in hands that won’t pull a gun on anybody.