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Treasury Secretary Bessent now says it’s OK for the Fed to wait to lower rates amid oil surge

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The Fed will most likely 'asterisk' inflation from tariffs and the war as one-offs, says Jim Cramer

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent waits for the first meeting of U.S. President Donald Trump’s anti-fraud task force convened by U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 27, 2026.

Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent said the Federal Reserve could wait to lower interest rates amid the oil spike, in a departure from his previous stance on monetary policy.

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“Do I think rates should be lowered? Eventually. I think now that we have to wait and see,” Bessent told Semafor Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith at the Semafor World Economy conference in Washington, DC.

Bessent has previously said that Fed Chair Jerome Powell should hasten cutting interest rates, saying in January that reductions are “the only ingredient missing for even stronger economic growth. Which is why the Fed should not delay.”

But the change in thinking comes amid the ongoing war in Iran, which has driven up oil prices to above $100 a barrel.

That complicates the Fed’s mandate, as it eyes rising inflation alongside slowing growth. The central bank was last expected to hold rates steady this year, with the slimmest possibility of a hike, according to fed funds futures pricing.

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Coming out of “January and February — the economy was very strong,” Bessent told Semafor.

Powell’s term as chair is up in May, but he could have to stay on longer if Trump’s chair nominee which Bessent helped select, Kevin Warsh, can’t get confirmed by the Senate by the time. Sen. Thom Tillis has vowed to block a Warsh vote until U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro ends her criminal probe into Powell related to Fed building cost overruns. Powell has said the probe is designed to put pressure on him by the Trump administration for not cutting rates more.

See the full Semafor story here.

— CNBC’s Jeff Cox contributed to this report.

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Crypto World

DAO Behind CoW Swap Urges Users to Stay off Platform after ‘Hijacking‘

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DAO, DeFi, Trading, DEX

The decentralized exchange aggregator said users should refrain from visiting its website after a frontend exploit.

Decentralized exchange aggregator CoW Swap is calling on users to refrain from using its website after an unknown party hijacked its domain.

In a Tuesday X post, the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) behind CoW Swap said its website had experienced a “DNS [Domain Name System] hijacking,” leading to a pause of its backend and APIs. The frontend exploit, through the website http://swap.cow.fi, was ongoing at the time of publication.

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“We are now actively working to resolve the situation,” said CoW Swap. “Please continue to refrain from using swap dot cow dot fi until we confirm that it is safe to use.”

DAO, DeFi, Trading, DEX
Source: CoW Swap

DNS attacks like the one CoW Swap reported are not uncommon among crypto and blockchain companies where user funds are at risk from phishing attempts. Decentralized exchange Balancer reported a domain attack in 2023, while Curve Finance said it has experienced multiple DNS hijackings.

Related: Firestorm erupts in Aave governance forum over CoW Swap fees

The price of the CoW Protocol’s COW token dropped more than 3% amid news of the domain hijacking, to $0.2159 from $0.2229.

Web3 hacks, driven by phishing, resulted in a half billion dollars in losses in Q1 2026

Blockchain security company Hacken reported on Tuesday that Web3 projects lost $482 million to hacks and scams in the first quarter of 2026. According to Hacken, there were 44 incidents over Q1 2026, most of which were phishing and social engineering attacks.

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