Matt Peterson

@mattpeterson

Journalist covering politics, policy, and economics for CNBC. matt.peterson@cnbc.com. personal site: mattpeterson.me

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Matt Peterson@mattpeterson· 13d

Try to spot when the market started doubting Kevin Warsh. From BofA.

Line chart titled “What Matters Today: Markets are questioning the Fed’s credibility after Warsh’s press conference.” It shows the U.S. 30-year Treasury yield’s intraday movement on July 29, 2026, from 10 a.m. to about 4:30 p.m. The yield starts near 5.10%, rises gradually to around 5.12% by midday, and then remains relatively steady through early afternoon. At 2 p.m., when the Fed’s policy decision is marked, the yield jumps to about 5.14%, then slips to roughly 5.13% by the start of the press conference at 2:30 p.m. It rises sharply afterward, reaching about 5.20% shortly after 3 p.m. and peaking above 5.21% around 4 p.m., before ending near 5.20%. Source: Bloomberg. Graphic credited to BofA Global Research.

Matt Peterson@mattpeterson· 22d

Great Reuters column on the mess in refineries. Bottom line for US consumers is gas prices may stay high even if crude doesn't get up to the heights of the first phase of the Iran war. www.reuters.com/commentary/r...

As the Iran crisis enters its fifth month, traders have become increasingly convinced that U.S. President Donald Trump will do almost anything to avoid a politically damaging spike in U.S. fuel prices.
But the bright flashing warning signs coming out of the refining system suggest the U.S. president may struggle to prevent one.
A rapid recovery in global refinery output remains ⁠unlikely. Several major refining hubs remain impaired, due to conflict, supply disruptions or export restrictions, just as summer demand for road fuels and jet fuel is reaching its peak. Diesel stocks typically build during summer ahead of winter.

Matt Peterson@mattpeterson· 22d

BofA: Take out all the "special factors" that people quibble about, and core PCE inflation is *still* above 2.5% Says Fed should hike.

AI-generated alt text: This graphic is a stacked bar chart from BofA Global Research showing its estimate of the factors contributing to annual core Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) inflation from January 2025 through June 2026 (projected). The y-axis ranges from 2.0% to 3.6%, and the x-axis shows monthly observations.

Each bar is divided into five color-coded components: dark blue for "underlying inflation," light blue for tariffs excluding AI-related effects, orange for Iran-related effects, teal for portfolio management, and green for computer software and accessories.

The chart shows that underlying inflation remains relatively stable, generally between about 2.4% and 2.7% throughout the period. Beginning in mid-2025, tariff-related effects become an increasingly important contributor, raising total core PCE above 3% during 2026. Smaller contributions from portfolio management, software and accessories, and Iran-related price effects appear mainly in 2026, with the Iran component emerging only in the final few months.

The headline emphasizes BofA's conclusion that even if all of these special factors were excluded, core PCE inflation would still have been about 2.5% year over year in June 2026, suggesting that underlying inflation remains above the Federal Reserve's 2% target. Total estimated core PCE peaks at roughly 3.4% in May 2026 before easing slightly to about 3.3% in the June 2026 projection.

Source: BofA Global Research using Bureau of Economic Analysis data.

Matt Peterson@mattpeterson· 24d

Look at that third byline. Hell of a return to print for Evan Gershkovich. www.wsj.com/world/middle...

A screenshot of a Wall Street Journal article, with black text on a white background. An image shows an artistically edited image of a bald man’s face. The screenshot includes this text:

The CIA Operative Who Spied on the U.A.E.-and Played a Role in Its Al Win
While conducting espionage against powerful sheikh's tech company, Jonny Gannon helped Gulf country quash Washington suspicions about China ties
ALEXANDRA CITRIN-SAFADI/WSJ
By Joel Schectman, Aruna Viswanatha and Evan
Gershkovich
Updated July 18, 2026 9:04 pm EDT

Matt Peterson@mattpeterson· Jul 10

Let's check in on Eric Trump's American Bitcoin, which just completed a 1-15 reverse stock split to keep Nasdaq from delisting it. $ABTC mines and buys Bitcoin. Despite the reverse split, the stock declined 44% over the past two weeks. Bitcoin itself is up 6% over that period.

AI-written alt text: The chart is a line graph titled "ABTC vs. Bitcoin Performance Since June 29, 2026." It compares the cumulative percentage return of American Bitcoin Corp. (ABTC) stock with the price of Bitcoin in U.S. dollars, with both series starting at 0% on June 29, 2026.

The horizontal axis shows dates from June 29 through July 10, 2026. The vertical axis shows cumulative return, with 0% marked by a horizontal reference line.

The Bitcoin line (blue) declines slightly on June 30 to about -3%, then rises above zero on July 2 and trends upward for most of the period. It finishes at approximately +6.3% on July 10, with only a modest dip around July 8.

The ABTC line (orange) falls much more sharply. It is down about 5% on June 30, roughly 13% on July 1, and about 21% by July 2. From July 3 through July 5, the line is dashed and remains flat at roughly -21%, indicating the stock did not trade during the U.S. market holiday and weekend and that the values were forward-filled. Trading resumes with a small uptick on July 6 before the stock drops steeply to about -39% on July 7 and reaches a low near -45% on July 8. It recovers only slightly, ending at approximately -43.6% on July 10.

A note in the lower-left corner explains: "ABTC did not trade Jul. 3–5, 2026 (U.S. market holiday/weekend). Dashed ABTC segment shows forward-filled non-trading dates."

Overall, the chart shows a stark divergence: over the same period, Bitcoin gained about 6%, while ABTC lost about 44%, substantially underperforming the cryptocurrency it is closely associated with.

Matt Peterson@mattpeterson· Jul 9

Ben Bernanke now can’t hold Anthropic stock. So how much do you have to pay one of the world’s leading economists for the opportunity cost of not buying into your mega IPO?

Anthropic is a Public Benefit
Corporation, meaning the company was created to balance commercial success with generating social and public good.
The LTBT exists to help the company responsibly maintain that balance over the long term, providing a check on how Anthropic develops and deploys AI. The Trustees are chosen for their expertise across a wide range of areas, and are independent of the compat
management and investors: they hold no equity in Anthropic, don't share in its profits, and are compensated only for their time and service. New Trustees are selected by the existing ones, in consultation with the company.

Matt Peterson@mattpeterson· Jun 26

This is dating me terribly but there is a William Safire column about this! www.nytimes.com/1992/11/01/m...

The popularity of another coinage will be inevitable in a Clinton Administration:
Clintonomics. For the omics suffix to work, the President's name must end in an n.
This all began when some of us in 1969 began pushing Nixonomics. (Although Johnsonomics would have been an effective neologism, it was not used, suggesting that Nixonomics was the form's first
Presidential use.) Although there was some straining for Fordonomics and
Carternomics, neither got off the ground because of the lack of the concluding n.

Matt Peterson@mattpeterson· Jun 25

Ludovic Subran, pointing out the elephant in the room, says SpaceX raising $25b in debt just after its IPO looks like a bubble. Per FT. www.ft.com/content/40b0...

"The guy just got $70bn of funny money to play with to get us to space," he said. "Of course, bond investors are not the same as equity investors. Equity investors, you can take them to Mars. Bond investors are, like, 'where is my coupon?'"
SpaceX received strong investor demand for the bond deal, allowing bankers to upsize it from $20bn to $25bn, but is having to pay a higher cost of borrowing than similarly rated companies.

Matt Peterson@mattpeterson· Jun 24

More substantively, Bair says the stress tests should be scrapped. They're only worth paying attention to because they effectively lock the Fed into bailouts, she says. (Though Bair also astutely notes that Warsh is ideologically opposed to bailouts. How this nets out in a crisis... 🤷)

"On Wednesday we get the stress test results. Doesn’t sound like you really trust them that much.

Oh, I don’t pay attention to them anymore. I just think they’re a dog-and-pony show. I do. I’m just so frustrated. I mean, they don’t stress what they should. They don’t stress the stagflation environment. The severe distress scenario always assumes interest rates basically go down to zero, so I think they’re misleading. I think they are an enormous time sink for bank staff and supervisors, and the rules keep changing, usually in response to industry requests to weaken them, not to strengthen them.

So, no, I don’t pay attention to them anymore, and I tell investors not to pay attention to them anymore. You can pay attention to them only to the extent that this is the Fed publicly saying this is [the banks’] capability to withstand stress. So, to the extent that locks the Fed into some kind of bailout, if they get into trouble, it might be relevant from that perspective. But as a test of the financial strength of the bank, no, I don’t trust them anymore. I really don’t."

Matt Peterson@mattpeterson· Jun 17

The task forces seem hokey but actually matter quite a bit for Warsh's theory of change at the Fed. My column on his first meeting: www.cnbc.com/2026/06/17/k...

Warsh’s task forces have the ring of the classic do-nothing government blue-ribbon commission, but they are central to his theory of change at the Fed. Warsh’s authority as Fed chair is largely delegated by the Fed’s Board of Governors and the wider FOMC. The task forces are an attempt by Warsh to prompt the Fed’s other members to come around to his way of thinking all on their own, with a little helpful guidance from the outside experts he selects.

Matt Peterson@mattpeterson· Jun 17

I don't know if either draft is real, but the MOU texts published by CNN and Bloomberg both contain the same typo. There's a dropped word (probably "will") before "lift the naval blockade."

Screenshot of text released by Bloomberg said to be of the draft Iran MOU. The words "lift the naval blockade" are highlighted. The full text reads:

4 — Immediately upon the signing of this Memorandum of Understanding, the United States lift the naval blockade and prevent any interference or obstruction against the Islamic Republic of Iran, and restore traffic within a maximum of 30 days to its full capacity; the traffic of ships shall be proportional to the pre-war volume of traffic on the part of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The United States also undertakes to withdraw its forces from the surrounding areas within 30 days after the final agreement.

Screenshot of text released by CNN said to be of the draft Iran MOU. The words "lift the naval blockade" are highlighted. The full text reads:

4 — Immediately upon the signing of this Memorandum of Understanding, the United States lift the naval blockade and prevent any interference or obstruction against the Islamic Republic of Iran, and restore traffic within a maximum of 30 days to its full capacity; the traffic of ships shall be proportional to the pre-war volume of traffic on the part of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The United States also undertakes to withdraw its forces from the surrounding areas within 30 days after the final agreement.

Matt Peterson@mattpeterson· Jun 11

Good morning to this Times Square nightmare fuel

Ai generated alt text: A large inflatable caricature dominates a busy city plaza surrounded by tall glass-and-steel skyscrapers and bright digital billboards. The inflatable depicts a smiling, shirtless man wearing a black baseball cap. It rises several stories high, towering over pedestrians below.

The figure appears intentionally exaggerated, with a broad grin and oversized facial features. Printed across its chest is a provocative political message about “SpaceX’s Grok” and AI-generated pornography. On its upper arm is a tattoo-style graphic of a heart with the word “KETAMINE” across it. Thin support lines anchor the inflatable to the ground.

The setting appears to be Times Square in New York City. Large illuminated advertisements fill the background, including prominent red-and-black signage for the musical Chicago. People walk, stand, and take photos around the installation, emphasizing its massive scale. Some pedestrians look toward the inflatable while others continue past it.

The overall scene feels like a public protest, political stunt, or advocacy display, using a giant satirical inflatable to attract attention amid the crowded, commercial environment of Times Square.

Matt Peterson@mattpeterson· Jun 11

Why I don't think Trump will turn on Kevin Warsh when the long-expected rate cut fails to materialize next week www.cnbc.com/2026/06/10/t...

“I love the inflation,” he said in the Oval Office hours after the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that annualized inflation jumped by 4.2%. If the president is unconcerned with the highest inflation in three years, that may buy Warsh a reprieve from expectations to quickly lower interest rates.

Matt Peterson@mattpeterson· May 18

The bond market says hello to Kevin Warsh

AI-generated alt text: This is a line chart comparing 10-year government bond yields for the United States, Europe, Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia from late January to May 18, 2026.

The horizontal axis shows time, and the vertical axis shows interest rates from about 2% to 5.5%.

Each country is represented by a colored line:

United States: blue
Europe: black
Japan: gold
Canada: teal
United Kingdom: purple
Australia: orange

At the end of the chart, the yields are:

UK: 5.18%
Australia: 5.12%
US: 4.62%
Canada: 3.69%
Europe: 3.18%
Japan: 2.74%

Overall, all six countries show rising yields over the period, meaning long-term borrowing costs increased.

The UK and Australia remain the highest throughout most of the chart, both finishing just above 5%. The US trends upward steadily after a dip in late February and ends near its highest point. Canada and Europe rise more moderately. Japan stays the lowest the entire time but still climbs noticeably, especially in May.

Most lines dip briefly around late February or early March before rising again. The sharpest upward move appears in the UK line during March, while Australia’s line is smoother and more stable.

Small labels near the top show the latest daily changes, and all are positive, indicating yields rose on the final day shown.

Matt Peterson@mattpeterson· Apr 24

Pirro's decision to drop her investigation of the Powell Fed is a step forward for Kevin Warsh, but not necessarily the Fed's independence. Not least because Pirro started the probe with no meaningful evidence of wrong-doing, and is saying she could restart it. www.cnbc.com/2026/04/24/f...

“I think we would be foolish to conclude from this that the Fed is out of the woods,” said Lev Menand, a professor at Columbia Law School.

Warsh has long pledged to keep the Fed independent, including at his nomination hearing Tuesday. But it remains to be seen how he can hold up against a president who has said lowering interest rates was a litmus test for his nominee. Trump isn’t shy about telling normally independent parts of the federal government what to do. The Fed is one of the few holdouts that remain largely outside his control.

Matt Peterson@mattpeterson· Apr 21

My take on the Warsh hearing: Prepare for regime change. For all the pushback he got from the Senate, there was very little questioning of his core premise that the Fed has failed at its core mission. www.cnbc.com/2026/04/21/k...

Warsh’s diagnosis of the Fed’s problems isn’t that it has interest rates wrong. Rather he believes the institution’s entire way of seeing the world since the financial crisis is wrong. That isn’t fixed, in his mind, by getting interest rates a quarter-point higher or lower. Rather, it is fixed by coming into the Fed and showing to the market and the public that a new sheriff is in town.

Matt Peterson@mattpeterson· Apr 20

Kevin Warsh ran a tech-focused VC fund for 15 years and counts Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen and Alex Karp among his friends. No wonder he's an AI evangelist. @steveliesman.bsky.social and I wrote on what it would mean to have the first tech bro Fed chair. www.cnbc.com/2026/04/20/f...

With his penchant for suits, ties and sweater vests, Federal Reserve chair nominee Kevin Warsh doesn’t share the rumpled look of many of the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs he calls friends. But they still count him as one of their own. “You wouldn’t be hanging out with us if you were as normal as you claim to be,” Palantir
CEO Alex Karp told Warsh on a podcast in 2022.

If confirmed by the Senate, Warsh wouldn’t just be the wealthiest Fed chair in history, he would also be the most tech-savvy and the closest to the tech-bro community to ever sit in the office.

Warsh’s connection to Karp and other titans of Silicon Valley such as reclusive PayPal
co-founder Peter Thiel, Yahoo founder Jerry Yang and prominent venture capitalist Marc Andreessen go back decades — to college at Stanford and to investments made alongside some of them beginning soon after Warsh resigned as a Fed governor in 2011.

Matt Peterson@mattpeterson· Apr 13

LSEG Shipping data show 12 transits of the Strait of Hormuz yesterday (US EST). There were 33 total over the whole weekend, per LSEG shipping, including some ships that did round trips. This is an imprecise count, and other providers will have different figures. But it isn't close to 34.

DJT Truth Social post: "34 34 Ships went through the Strait of Hormuz yesterday, which is by far the highest number since this foolish closure began. President DONALD J. TRUMP."

Matt Peterson@mattpeterson· Apr 12

Just speculating but Trump's blockade plan sounds a like lot what Fox News analyst Jack Keane described in a New York Post op-ed last week: Cut off Iran's oil exports with a naval blockade. nypost.com/2026/04/09/o...

And if we must escalate the fight, the United States has an ace up its sleeve: Kharg Island.

Iran’s massive oil processing installation is its No. 1 strategic asset, and therefore our No. 1 strategic target. Kharg Island represents over 90% of Iran’s oil distribution, 60% of its revenue, and 50% of the budget.

If the war resumes and after we degrade Iran’s remaining military assets sufficiently, the US military could choose to occupy Kharg — or to destroy it.

Alternatively, the US Navy could set up a blockade, shutting down Tehran’s export lifeline.

If we preserve Kharg’s infrastructure but take physical control, we’d have a chokehold over Iran’s oil and its economy.

That’s the ultimate leverage we’d need to seize its “nuclear dust,” or stores of enriched uranium, and to eliminate its enrichment facilities.

Matt Peterson@mattpeterson· Mar 31

Allies are pissed, and in a real bind. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

The last known shipment of jet fuel to the UK from the Middle East is expected to arrive this week, pointing to the fast-approaching impact of the Iran war on airlines and travellers.
The shipment, on the Libyan-flagged
"Maetiga" vessel, is due to arrive in the UK around Thursday from Saudi Arabia, data providers Kpler and Vortexa said. No other UK-bound cargoes from the region are visible on the water, given the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, they added.
The UK has sourced at least half of its jet fuel from the Middle East in recent months, after turning away from Russian supplies following Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine and amid
a decline in domestic refining.

Matt Peterson@mattpeterson· Mar 29

The way the Iranians are trying to use the market against Trump is just wild. It is a real weak spot!

MB Ghalibaf | محمد باقر قاليباف @
...・2h
Heads-up: Pre-market so-called "news" or
"Truth" is often just a setup for profit-taking.
Basically, it's a reverse indicator.
X
Do the opposite: If they pump it, short it. If they dump it, go long.
See something tomorrow? You know the drill.

Matt Peterson@mattpeterson· Mar 27

Important story to watch from the FT about hints of trouble in Treasury markets. This detail on trading problems on Monday stood out. www.ft.com/content/2e01...

Volatility across markets has risen dramatically since the start of the war, but Treasury trading became especially fraught on Monday after Trump wrote on Truth Social early in the day that the US had held “productive” talks with Iran, just for Tehran to later say there had been no discussions.

The tumult in Treasuries was so severe that some big Wall Street banks turned off the screens they use to automatically quote prices, forcing buyers to revert to slower manual human-to-human trading.

“Monday morning after the initial immediate shock from the Truth Social post, you saw electronic trading disrupted. You saw dealers turn off autoquotes on Treasuries,” said Michael Lorizio, senior fixed-income trader at Manulife Asset Management, who noted that investors had briefly “struggled to price” some Treasury securities.

Matt Peterson@mattpeterson· Mar 16

Is he implying that the NSA would help him investigate the leak?

Matt Peterson@mattpeterson· Mar 12

Iran's new supreme leader appears to be on X. The verified, longstanding X account for late Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei, shared a post reputedly by Mojtaba Khamenei. It's been a matter of some controversy that first Twitter and then X have permitted Iran to have this account.

Matt Peterson@mattpeterson· Feb 22

👑

Screenshot of Zohran Mamdani’s X account with the text “we’ve got a full snow day tomorrow.”

Matt Peterson@mattpeterson· Feb 10

Yesterday our Nick Devor wrote that the CFTC was down to its last enforcement attorney in its influential Chicago office. That last attorney has now also resigned, Nick reports. www.barrons.com/articles/pre...

The Chicago enforcement division of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is known as a group of heavy-hitters. Trial attorneys and investigators in the Chicago office have had a role in most major CFTC enforcement actions since the birth of the agency in 1975, including prosecuting self-serving traders on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange
CME

-1.26%

in the late ‘80s and pursuing civil charges against cryptocurrency fraudsters like Sam Bankman-Fried.

In recent months, that office has become a ghost town. A team once comprised of 20 enforcement attorneys now has one, people familiar with the office tell Barron’s. After this story was first published, Barron’s learned that the last remaining lawyer resigned. That attorney has not responded to requests for comment.

Matt Peterson@mattpeterson· Feb 6

Just checking in on American Bitcoin, the Eric Trump venture that is a leveraged bet on Bitcoin.

The image features a line graph set against a white background with a light red shaded area beneath the trend line.

The Trend: The line starts on the left (around Feb 1) at approximately $1.50. It maintains a jagged but relatively flat level until midday on Feb 3, where it begins a sharp, consistent decline.

The Vertical Axis (Price): Ranges from $1.10 at the bottom to $1.60 at the top.

The Horizontal Axis (Time): Marked with dates from February 2 through February 5.

Current Position: The line ends at its lowest point on the far right of the chart, marked with a solid red dot at the $1.15 mark.

(Summary written with AI)

Matt Peterson@mattpeterson· Feb 3

Binance is effectively paying 20% annual interest to holders of a Trump family-linked stablecoin, David Kirkpatrick reports in the New Yorker. The circulation volume of the stablecoin, World Liberty Financial's USD1, has since risen from $2 billion to $5 billion. www.newyorker.com/news/a-repor...

Matt Peterson@mattpeterson· Jan 30

Tillis not backing down on the Powell probe, could be trouble for Warsh

Sen. Thom Tillis on X:
Kevin Warsh is a qualified nominee with a deep understanding of monetary policy. However, the Department of Justice continues to pursue a criminal investigation into Chairman Jerome Powell based on committee testimony that no reasonable person could construe as possessing criminal intent. Protecting the independence of the Federal Reserve from political interference or legal intimidation is non-negotiable.

My position has not changed: I will oppose the confirmation of any Federal Reserve nominee, including for the position of Chairman, until the DOJ’s inquiry into Chairman Powell is fully and transparently resolved.

Matt Peterson@mattpeterson· Jan 22

Belgium disputes that it joined Trump’s Board of Peace. It was included on a list released by the White House today.