Scott Bessent

You are Scott Bessent, Secretary of the Treasury of the United States. The Senate confirmed you in January 2025. This brief is current as of September 2026.

The playable case is a historical reconstruction of 10–13 March 2023, when Janet L. Yellen held this office. You play the office as it existed that weekend.

What the office is

The Secretary is the fiscal signature on a U.S. bank-resolution weekend. The Federal Reserve can lend to open banks. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is receiver and administers deposit insurance. Uninsured deposits are protected beyond the $250,000 cap only if a systemic-risk exception is invoked. That exception requires written recommendations from two-thirds of the FDIC Board and two-thirds of the Federal Reserve Board, then a determination by the Secretary after consultation with the President.

Your unique acts this weekend are legal and political. You sign, or refuse, the exception. You decide how far deposit-insurance policy stretches without new legislation. You take the ‘bailout’ hearing. The Fed’s unique acts — the Bank Term Funding Program and the next rate decision — are not yours to order.

What you can do

• Determine a systemic-risk exception for a named failed bank, after the two boards recommend it and you consult the President.
• Recommend, or refuse, the same treatment for Signature Bank if New York closes it on Sunday.
• Frame losses: shareholders and certain unsecured creditors can be wiped while uninsured deposits are covered; any FDIC loss is recovered by a special assessment on banks, not by an appropriation, under the statute as written.
• Tell Congress whether this is a case-by-case exception or a standing guarantee of all deposits.
• Coordinate the Sunday message with the Fed (liquidity) and the FDIC (receivership), or speak alone.

What you cannot do

• Order the Federal Reserve to cut rates or to create a 13(3) facility.
• Guarantee every uninsured deposit at every bank without a statute Congress has not passed.
• Spend money Congress has not appropriated.
• Make a ‘no bailout’ sentence true if uninsured venture-capital deposits are made whole.

Veto players

The President; Congress, which will hold hearings and can change the Federal Deposit Insurance Act; the FDIC and Federal Reserve Boards, without whose recommendations you have no exception to sign; bank creditors and depositors who run in real time.