Scott Bessent, billionaire investor and hedge fund founder, has thrown himself into the center of two political firestorms—one in New York City, the other thousands of miles south in Argentina. As Bessent helped engineer a $20 billion currency swap line for Argentina, run by the Elon Musk–like controversy-magnet president, the famously eccentric Javier Milei, he made clear New York City can’t expect similar treatment. Bessent harked back to a famous big-city tabloid newspaper headline when he said mayoral favorite Zohran Mamdani can “drop dead” if he runs the city into a financial crisis and expects Milei-like treatment.
Mamdani, of course, is the little-known, outer-borough millennial assemblyman turned mayoral favorite who trounced Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary in June. Business leaders have been uniformly appalled by his far-left platform and affiliation with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), a group associated with figures including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). Jamie Dimon, for instance, called Mamdani “more of a Marxist than a socialist,” although Mamdani has also reportedly engaged the JPMorgan CEO in a friendly phone call. President Donald Trump said it looks like Mamdani is going to win, while ripping the Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa for his shelter-cat adoptions, being “not exactly prime time.”
