Bessent Tells the Fed Not to Hike “Too Much”

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Treasury wants the Fed to ease off while the officials who actually vote on rates lean the other way. Long-bond holders sit in the middle of that standoff, and two December dates could decide who wins.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went on CNBC. On the morning of Friday, November 13, 2026, he warned that it would be a mistake for the Federal Reserve to "hike too much into an energy supply shock" that he says is now easing. He called the recent inflation data very noisy. He said the Fed should look ahead rather than react to past data.

Long bonds kept falling anyway. The iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (NASDAQ:TLT) fell 0.43% to $79.38, ending a week in which it lost 3.1%. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY) slipped 0.38% to $754.21.

That leaves TLT owners facing a split between Treasury and the Fed, as Bessent wants restraint but the officials who vote on rates spent the same Friday leaning toward another hike. The Fed raised its range by a quarter point effective September 17, 2026, to 3.75% to 4.00%, and the range has not changed since.

Bessent said gasoline is below $4 a gallon, oil is down $20, and diesel is down about 10% so far. He predicted that a mild inflation number would likely arrive next week, but he did not name the report.

Many successful investors eventually reach the same moment. The saving is done, the portfolio is built, and the question quietly changes from how much can I grow this to how much can I take out? Get that second question wrong and decades of good investing can come apart in a handful of years.

He also cited 3.4% growth last quarter and the Atlanta Fed's GDP tracker at 3.5% for the current quarter. The Fed sets rates on its own, so his remarks were an opinion and did not change policy.

The October producer price index showed final-demand prices up 0.3% for the month and 6.5% from a year earlier, not seasonally adjusted. That was the biggest 12-month gain since November 2022.

Energy prices fell 0.1%, and diesel dropped 7.9%, which supports Bessent's view that the shock is easing. But overall producer prices still rose while energy fell, so the pressure is coming from somewhere else.

Bessent argues the Fed should look through the…

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