Bessent’s chief of staff Katz to join the IMF: – Business News
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s Chief of Staff Dan Katz is set to depart the Trump administration and join the International Monetary Fund as the first deputy managing director, three sources acquainted with the matter informed The Post.
Katz, a former senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute who joined the Treasury Department in January, will turn into the most senior American at the IMF, working beneath Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, a Bulgarian economist and ex-EU commissioner.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent just lately accused the IMF of “mission creep” REUTERS
“He is one of the secretary’s closest confidantes,” mentioned one insider. “It is a big win for President Trump’s America First economic agenda on the international stage.”
A Treasury spokesperson declined to remark.
The Yale graduate and Goldman Sachs alum, who additionally served in the first Trump administration, performed a key position in thrashing out the US’s financial partnership deal with Ukraine and is seen as Bessent’s level man on China.
Bessent has just lately criticized the IMF for “mission creep” and accused it of selling woke causes in a speech in downtown DC in April.
He blasted the international lender, set up after World War II, claiming it “devotes disproportionate time and resources to work on climate change, gender, and social issues.”
“Focus on these areas is crowding out its work on critical macroeconomic issues,” he mentioned in the speech at the Institute of International Finance Forum. “The IMF has been whistling past the graveyard.”
There are already indicators of some modifications at the establishment, which is usually described as a lender of final resort as a result of it helps bail out debt-laden economies.
Last week, sources informed The Post that the Fund’s climate and gender items would no longer operate as standalone divisions inside the physique, however would as a substitute be merged into its wider macroeconomic unit.
This international financial firefighter was at the forefront of the European debt disaster in 2008 when Eurozone economies had been despatched into meltdown after the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
Katz can have a new boss in IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, middle, a Bulgarian economist and a former EU commissioner. AP
It was created out of the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 in the US when the US, the UK, and the former Soviet Union mentioned how to form the post-WW2 international economic system.
Ironically, officers at the international lender additionally take pleasure in lavish perks nearly unheard of in the personal sector and plenty of people in the international locations that take its loans can solely dream of.
The Post revealed in December how its staffers can gain cut-rate entry to an upmarket Maryland golf and nation membership that prices common Joes a minimum of $20,000 to join.
The IMF’s prime administrators can rake in round $437,000 yearly, in contrast with $52,000 for junior staffers, in accordance to the newest publicly out there wage data.
They may decide up eye-popping retirement advantages, together with “a generous final salary” pension and complete worldwide health insurance coverage, the IMF’s recruitment web page states.
