“Trump is especially concerned about the effect of his Treasury pick on the stock market, and does not want to interrupt the market’s momentum since his victory.

That calculus has ruled out his former trade adviser Robert Lighthizer, whose hard-line embrace of tariffs would likely jar the markets.”

This sort of gaming of passive index ETF flows makes me think about how Moody’s/S&P AAA ratings could be gamed for securitized credit products:

Apparently it’s to fill the seat ASAP like by January — unclear how quickly they can schedule a special election: