| | | | |  | | By Declan Harty | Editor’s note: Morning Money is a free version of POLITICO Pro Financial Services morning newsletter, which is delivered to our subscribers each morning at 5:15 a.m. The POLITICO Pro platform combines the news you need with tools you can use to take action on the day’s biggest stories. Act on the news with POLITICO Pro. PROGRAMMING NOTE: We’ll be off starting Wednesday for the holidays but back to our normal schedule on Monday, Jan. 6, 2025.
| | Wall Street’s top derivatives regulator has historically been viewed as something of an afterthought for an incoming administration. Not this time. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission chair is one of the biggest remaining question marks surrounding President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming government. The small but powerful agency is primed to play a central role in some of the biggest policy fights in finance today, including how to regulate the $3 trillion cryptocurrency market. And that has set off a wave of speculation and jockeying — and speculation about the jockeying — over who Trump will tap for chair. “It wasn’t a sexy job to get. Now, you have an opportunity to get an entirely new market that’s exploding in value and complexity,” a crypto lobbyist told MM. “It’s a career-defining role.” Former CFTC Commissioner Brian Quintenz, who now leads policy for Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto arm, is viewed as a leading contender for the job, according to two people familiar with the transition talks, who were granted anonymity to speak freely. Quintenz’s background in the traditional derivatives markets, in crypto and at the CFTC itself are seen as major selling points. His candidacy has been publicly backed by former CFTC Chair Chris Giancarlo and many of the crypto industry’s biggest players. Andreessen Horowitz Managing Partner Scott Kupor — who Trump tapped for director of the Office of Personnel Management on Sunday night — posted on X earlier this month that “Brian would be a great leader for the CFTC”. But a final decision still appears to be up in the air, others told MM, and several other candidates remain in the mix. They include CFTC Commissioner Summer Mersinger, a former top staffer to incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Milbank partner Josh Sterling and Willkie Farr & Gallagher partner Neal Kumar. One of the people familiar with the transition talks told MM that Mersinger has recently jumped back “into the swing of things.” All four — Quintenz, Mersinger, Sterling and Kumar — recently met with the Trump team in Florida to interview for the position, two people familiar with the matter told MM. “There are a number of viable candidates — none of whom are aware that the field has been narrowed,” another person told MM. “And those candidates continue to engage in affirmative discussions with folks … to advocate for themselves. No question about that.” Quintenz, Sterling and Kumar declined to comment, as did a Mersinger spokesperson. A spokesperson for the transition did not respond to a request for comment. Some speculate that Trump’s decision could come as soon as today — though many predicted an announcement last week, too. Either way, when the president-elect’s selection does drop, it is likely to be the latest sign of the CFTC’s importance to the incoming administration. After all, the last time a CFTC pick was named before Inauguration Day was 2008 — when Barack Obama named Gary Gensler to head the agency. It’s Monday — The holidays are finally here, and, in case you were wondering, the best gift for me would be SEC and CFTC hot takes and gossip. You can send them here: dharty@politico.com. As for tomorrow’s Morning Money — the final edition of 2024 — send all news and tips to the great Eleanor Mueller at emueller@politico.com.
| | | | You read POLITICO for trusted reporting. Now follow every twist of the lame duck session with Inside Congress. We track the committee meetings, hallway conversations, and leadership signals that show where crucial year-end deals are heading. Subscribe now. | | | | | | | | | You get a job, and you get a job, and you get a job — While we wait on CFTC chair, President-elect Donald Trump went on an announcement kick over the weekend that included naming a new chair for the Council of Economic Advisers and building out the team around his White House artificial intelligence and crypto czar, David Sacks. — Stephen Miran, a former Treasury official, has been picked to lead the CEA. Miran, currently an economics fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a senior strategist for the hedge fund Hudson Bay Capital Management, has been a critic of the Federal Reserve and President Joe Biden’s economic policies, Mia McCarthy and your host reported. — Bo Hines has been tapped to join the newly created Presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Assets as executive director. Hines, a one-time college football player, ran for Congress in 2022, narrowly losing to now-outgoing Rep. Wiley Nickel of North Carolina. Chaired by Sacks, the council will be “a new advisory group composed of luminaries from the Crypto industry,” Trump said in a statement. — Trump also named Sriram Krishnan, a former general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, as senior policy adviser for artificial intelligence at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. CFPB hits big banks over Zelle — From Katy O’Donnell: “The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Friday sued the operator of Zelle and three of its owner banks — Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo — for allegedly failing to protect consumers from fraud on the peer-to-peer payment network.” Trump puts social media shares into a trust — For months, government ethics groups have fretted about what President-elect Donald Trump will do with his massive $4 billion stake in Trump Media & Technology Group. Late last week, he finally gave them an answer, your host reports. The incoming president put his nearly 115 million shares in the parent company of Truth Social into a trust controlled by his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. Still, there are concerns. Jordan Libowitz, vice president for communications at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said the move “is like a head nod in the direction of ethics without taking an actual ethical step.”
| | The government avoids a shutdown crisis — Lawmakers capped off the 118th Congress — and a fraught last week — with a deal to fund the government until the middle of March and avoid a holiday shutdown. — The bill, which President Joe Biden signed Saturday, “managed the last-minute demands of President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk, along with the ensuing furor of congressional Democrats,” Jennifer Scholtes and Katherine Tully-McManus reported early Saturday morning. New Senate Banking members — The chief Senate panel charged with overseeing Wall Street will feature several new faces next year — some of whom are far from new to the financial world. Senator-elect David McCormick of Pennsylvania, the former Bridgewater Associates CEO, and Sen. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, who previously served on the board of TD Ameritrade, which was founded by his father, Joe Ricketts, will both join the Senate Banking Committee next year, Ursula Perano reports. Other Republicans joining the committee are incoming Sens. Jim Banks of Indiana and Bernie Moreno of Ohio, a staunch crypto ally.
| | | ‘The crack cocaine’ of stock trading — Years after a blitz of interest in Wall Street investing, men across the country are struggling with addiction issues tied to risky trading in the financial markets, The Wall Street Journal’s Gunjan Banerji reports. And the issues are only expected to worsen. — “More than 30 people interviewed by The Wall Street Journal, many of whom regularly attend GA meetings, said they’ve struggled with compulsive gambling in financial markets. At times, the trading led to mood swings, sleepless nights and even depression. Their trades—and spiraling losses—became a shameful secret that they kept from their partners or other loved ones.”
| | | | Panama Canal — “President-elect Donald Trump threatened on Saturday that the U.S. would reassume control of the Panama Canal if it felt that Panama wasn’t honoring the terms of a 1977 treaty regarding the waterway’s legal status,” Eric Bazail-Eimil reports. — More transition news: In addition to his announcement of the new CEA chair, the incoming president tapped “The Apprentice” producer Mark Burnett as special envoy to the United Kingdom, billionaire Houston Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta as the next ambassador to Italy and a critic of Pope Francis as ambassador to the Holy See.
| | | | POLITICO Pro's unique analysis combines exclusive transition intelligence and data visualization to help you understand not just what's changing, but why it matters for your organization. Explore how POLITICO Pro will make a difference for you. | | | | | | | | Illinois’ swipe fee law blocked — From Michael Stratford: “A federal judge on Friday blocked Illinois from enforcing key parts of its new state law that prohibits credit and debit card issuers from charging swipe fees on taxes and tips.” Controversy at CoinDesk — CoinDesk owner Bullish let go of its top editors Friday after “a newsroom controversy in which Bullish leadership forced editors to take down an article about the crypto billionaire Justin Sun after his team complained about its tone,” Fortune’s Leo Schwartz reports. A new inauguration backer — POLITICO’s Daniel Lippman scooped over the weekend that Intuit, the company best known for its TurboTax and QuickBooks products, is giving $1 million to Trump’s inauguration — making it the latest company from corporate America to donate to the effort. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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