Good morning. Tesla announced yesterday that it is recalling most of its Cybertrucks — sending the shares down further, despite Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick’s helpful suggestion that investors buy the stock. But another Elon Musk company, X, née Twitter, has shot back up to its original $44bn valuation, after dropping to an estimated less than $10bn sometime last year. Is Musk better at social media than cars? Email us: robert.armstrong@ft.com and aiden.reiter@ft.com.
Scott Bessent’s debt maturity problem
Treasury secretary Scott Bessent has a tough choice to make this year.
Prior to taking office, he and some of Donald Trump’s other economic advisers criticised his predecessor Janet Yellen’s handling of the Treasury market. Yellen had shifted the mix of Treasury issuance towards short-term bills and away from long-term bonds. It was “quantitative easing by another name”, the critics said. In a widely circulated paper, incoming chair of the Council of Economic Advisers Stephen Miran argued that issuing more short-term Treasuries artificially lowers longer-term yields, allowing the government to run up bigger deficits and stimulate the economy without spooking bondholders.