Former Trump aide ‘The Mooch’ has things to say on Miami, economy and former president

Some people may know Anthony Scaramucci more for his brief time in the Trump administration than the impact he has made in the financial world. On the political stage, he made headlines and a quick exit. People called him “The Mooch.”

But Scaramucci is a long-time American financier based in New York City. He founded SkyBridge Capital in 2005 following a stint as a Goldman Sachs executive. SkyBridge started the SALT conference, or SkyBridge Alternatives Conference, a yearly investment conference and one of the most important in global finance. He briefly served as White House communications director in the first year of former President Trump’s administration.

Scaramucci will give a keynote speech Friday at the Miami Economic Forum, hosted by the Economic Club of Miami.

READ MORE: ‘The Mooch’ and other finance giants are coming to Little Havana. Here are the details

The Miami Herald interviewed him this week at the Faena Hotel in Miami Beach. Here are edited excerpts from the question-and-answer session:

Herald question: How did you get involved with the Economic Club of Miami?

Scaramucci answer: I met Jon [Economic Club of Miami co-founder Jon Hartley] through the Goldman Sachs alumni network. I’m an ex-Goldman person although it’s been a long time for me. Jon reached out to me. He’s a brilliant young man. We have this young leaders’ community at SALT [a global investment network and conference founded by SkyBridge Capital]. He was one of the first members.

This will be my third time speaking. Being able to speak at the Economic Club is a lot of fun. Unfortunately for me, I’m on the back nine as they say: I just turned 60.

I don’t know if this is something to be proud about or horrified by but I’ve gone through nine bear markets. I’ve seen the ups and downs in the stock market and U.S. economy. I’ve had my ups and downs in politics. I’ve had my ups and downs in crypto, and I’m still here. There are a lot of arrows on my back and a lot of bullets in my forehead.

It’s fun for me to get to offer perspective to younger people that are just getting their career started. I’m enjoying meeting young people, providing mentorship, providing perspective.

What do you plan to say on Friday?

They asked me to discuss the macroeconomic environment, the interest rate cycle, and cryptocurrency with the new SEC regulations.

I think the U.S. economy is incredibly strong. That’s a result of $5 trillion of stimulus put into the economy during COVID. We’re still in the afterglow of that. People have a tendency to forget the magnitude of money pushed into the economy.

Now, savings rates are burning off into consumption which is why the GDP numbers are so strong.

The Fed probably underestimated the durability of the inflation numbers, but now may be slightly behind in the opposite direction, behind in lowering rates.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made it harder for Europe and tipped Germany into recession.

I think we’re about to import some deflation from China. Evergrande, the largest property developer in China, is basically insolvent. We’re learning there’s an economic crisis in China. The Chinese Central Bank is pulling $287 billions of reserves that are off the Chinese mainland and bringing it back onshore to stimulate the economy. That’s deflationary.

While the U.S. is growing, parts of the world are weakening economically, especially China, and so, that’s going to have a very big impact on inflation. The Fed is going to start cutting rates. Now will they wait? Yeah, they may wait. I think they start to trend down by the middle of the year.

What about crypto?

The new ETF laws are positive. [ETFs are exchange-traded funds, similar to mutual funds. In January, the SEC approved the first U.S. listed bitcoin ETF.] The laws of the country are pretty clear. You’re allowed to have property in the country and crypto has been deemed intangible property by the IRS.

So even if U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and SEC Chairman Garry Gensler don’t like crypto currencies, they really don’t have regulatory authority.

We’re in a world where the security and efficiency of the blockchain are going to make transactions a lot cheaper. My feeling is that the U.S. has had the mantle of financial services leadership for 125 years. Why give that up due to politicization of our regulatory process?

Obviously, we want to protect consumers.

How do you see Miami today?

Whatever is happening here in Miami in 2024 will be exponentially larger and broader and deeper by 2029. The venture capital industry will be exponentially larger. There’ll be more buildings here. There’ll be more condos here. There’ll be more office buildings. There’ll be more infrastructure.

I’m a New Yorker. I live two miles from my 87-year-old mother. I’m an Italian mama’s boy. I don’t really leave New York. But if I was going to leave New York, this is the destination I’d come to.

There is a culture of entrepreneurial risk-taking built into the whole culture of the city. It’s an incredible place. It’s a complex place, though. It’s not a Latin American city, but it’s an American Latin City.

Venture capital invested in Miami decreased in 2023. How sustainable is Miami’s growth?

I think it’s a frontier for VC. I don’t think it’s sedimentary. Silicon Valley and Northern California are sedimentary. If you go to the Rosewood restaurant and hotel, it’s literally like a venture capital carnival in there.

When you’re on a frontier, once in a while you’ll get a few ghost towns. But by and large, the frontier is growing. Also, if you’re going to have a recession — and we had a big VC recession — the frontiers are going to get hit harder than the old school places.

Miami is certainly among top 8 to 10 tech hubs in the U.S.

What’s your view of the general economy and the presidential elections this year?

On the economy, I’m very optimistic.

On the elections, I think Joe Biden will win the election. He’ll beat Donald Trump like a drum. He’ll win by 10 million votes. It’s still too early and the polling is murky, but incumbents win when there’s a strong economy.

Mr. Trump has not expanded his base. If anything, his base has shrunk. And yet there’s a lot of gibberish and right-wing gibberish on social media and places like Fox News, but ultimately people generally like how things are going. They don’t want to go back to that sort of insanity and instability.

If I’m wrong, I’ll be wrong. But I doubt it.

Also, he’s got legal issues. He’s going to have to post $83 million worth of bond collateral to appeal this judgment. He’s going lose that. He’s got the insurrection case coming, the electoral interference case coming, the intelligence theft case. He’s got a handful of things in front of him that I think are going to be very painful.

What about your political evolution?

I was a garden variety center-right Republican.

I voted for Obama because I went to law school with him, but I’ve generally been a center-right but socially inclusive — pro gay marriage and pro women’s right to choose — Republican. That’s been my mantra for 35 years. [He fundraised for Mitt Romney in 2012.]

I voted for Trump in 2016. I did not vote for him in 2020 because I thought he was reckless as a president and I thought he was unstable. And that high level of instability is not good for the world, and it’s not good for the country.

What do you think of the GOP today?

I think it’s a mess. The GOP has been hijacked by ultra-right leadership. It’s like if Joel Osteen and Jim Jordan had a baby. That’s the GOP.

People will look back 50 years from now and they’ll say, ‘Wow, the nuts in the nuthouse took over the party.’

Unfortunately, we’ve muted the rationalists who’ve become the non-voter. The rationalists have become the cynics and checked out of the political system. And so now we have the lunatics running the asylum.

I think it’s sad. It’ll correct itself of course because this is America and I’m a big believer in America. And we’ve had worse cycles than this. We went through several wars and the Civil War. We’ll survive this, but this has been a mess.

Was there any candidate in the GOP primary you considered?

No, no. You gotta vote for Biden.

Can the GOP still claim the mantle of pro-capitalism and pro-markets?

They are propping up someone who’s a criminal, somebody who said he’s going to go after his political adversaries. They’re propping up someone who says he wants to expand executive powers, and he wants to make our laws unpredictable. One thing capitalism needs is predictable laws.

What did you make of DeSantis presidential run?

I predicted when he started in the race that he would be blown out very quickly because he does not have the personality or the temperament to be the president. He’s generally viewed as an effective leader here, but he’s a brittle leader, somebody that picks a fight with the state’s largest employer and a fixture of Americana rather than finding a way to cooperate with them. That is a sign of imbecility. It’s a sign of immaturity.