Posted on 09/23/2025 10:26:29 AM PDT by lasereye
We hear constantly about the importance of the independence of the Federal Reserve. Fine: but what if the Fed isn’t independent of politics, it is just independent of, and hostile to, the administration that is in power?
Some think that is the situation now before us. Stephen Moore comments on Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s most recent pronouncements:
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell was full of doom and gloom yesterday [Wednesday], forecasting 1.6% growth for this year and closer to 1.5% next year.Was he talking about Afghanistan or the United States?
In the second quarter of this year, the U.S. economy grew by 3.3%, and with a few weeks to go in the third quarter, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta is forecasting above 3% growth – twice Powell’s anemic rate.
Why is Powell so pessimistic?
Powell never mentioned that real household incomes are up $1,100 for the first seven months of 2025.He attacks Trump’s tariffs and more restrictive immigration policies as restricting growth – and he’s right on that. But he never mentions the Trump tax cut, the immediate expensing for capital purchases (which has spurred an investment boom), the deregulations that could save up to $1 trillion this year, or that Trump’s pro-energy policies have increased U.S. production of oil and gas to record highs, or that the area where job growth is way down is in government employment – which is GOOD for the economy.
So Powell is hostile to the administration’s economic agenda, and–perhaps–has positioned the Fed in opposition to it.
There’s also something almost comical of a Fed chair who let inflation soar by 21% and promised it was all “transitory” now terrified of an inflation rate of less than 3% this year.
Again: is Powell actually independent, or is he just on the other side?
Moore concludes:
The Fed should be independent, yes. But it should also be competent and accountable. Under Powell’s reign of error, the central bank has been neither. The end can’t come soon enough.
Larry Kudlow makes some of the same points, but takes the argument a little further:
[T]he Jay Powell Fed expects the economy to grow by only 1.6 percent this year, 1.8 percent next year, and 1.9 percent the year after.While the central bank’s policymakers did raise their GDP projections slightly, their numbers basically say: We at the Fed don’t believe Trump policies.
The Fed’s inflation numbers go from 3 percent down to 2 percent over the next three years. And that’s okay.
But the gap between Mr. Trump’s economy, which he expects to grow by 3 percent to 4 percent, and the Fed’s view of less than 2 percent, is troublesome.
And it suggests that the central bank opposes the president’s policies.
This is not good.
It’s one of many reasons why Mr. Powell should’ve resigned months ago.
Powell also should have asked for the resignation of mortgage fraudster Lisa Cook.
Meanwhile, Mr. Powell’s mismanagement of the Federal Reserve is beyond the pale.In recent years, the central bank lost nearly $200 billion from a mismatch of their assets and liabilities.
The money managers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York are losing money on a daily basis. They have been paying banks 4.5 percent, but their portfolio generates only 2.5 percent.
Meanwhile, the Fed’s bond portfolio is completely under water, with some estimating its losses at $250 billion.
Then, of course, there is the Fed’s Taj Majal, construction of which I believe President Trump has stopped. But that is a minor point, compared to the possibility that the Chairman of the Federal Reserve is actively trying to undermine America’s economic policies. That isn’t independence, it is partisanship.
Happily, Powell’s reign will end soon:
folks should cheer that interest rates are headed lower.And they should also cheer that in a few months Mr. Trump will appoint his own Fed chairman, to help him achieve his splendid economic growth policies.
Tell me again why we even need a Federal Reserve? Maybe someone more financially savvy than I can provide a solid, positive reason for its existence.
Time for Powell to go? How about time for the Federal Reserve to go?
the market doesnt like whatever he just said
He said that GDP growth will be below expectations and that tariffs will bring inflation. This asshole needs to go. Keeping him in place is worse than any loss of autonomy might bring.
In the system we have the Fed acts as a governor on interest rates. Without the Central Bank you would allow the marketplace to set rates. With the fiscally irresponsible Congress and Executive Branches we tend to elect allowing the Marketplace to set rates would be suicidal.
Yes, it sounds great—“Get rid of the Fed”—….just make sure every asset you have has been converted to gold before it happens. Because the dollar would be destroyed. The resulting “panic” would make the Great Depression look like a good time.
The Fed sucks. But it is the cleanest dirty shirt in the pile.
you know he only has one vote right? even if he’s gone, it probably wouldn’t make any differences
besides, probably only bag holders want him gone.
I on the other hand am doing quite well on the market, except of course, wendy’s, well, at least i’m not $djt shareholder. lol
It’s time for the FED to go. Not just that crook, Powell.
The Federal Reserve is the biggest soviet-style central planning agency that exists. We don’t except soviet central planning for wheat, tractors, shoes, computers - why do we accept it for the most basic commodity of all - money?
Of course it is political. Has been for many decades, certainly since Nixon went off the gold standard.
You just admitted that printed fiat money, courtesy of the Federal Reserve, has enabled massively bloated government debt (and thus, decades of top-down neo-marxist social engineering), and destruction of our currency, without admitting it.
Trump and Bessant have some interesting ideas to keep kicking the debt can down the road, but it won't work forever.
The Fed shouldn’t be independent of the executive branch at all. By loaning money to banks, the create more money than the mint. The executive is responsible for all coinage, thus all money creation.
The problem is by abandoning the Bretton Woods gold exchange mechanism in 1971, Nixon effectively transferred control of the currency to the Federal Reserve, because only the interest rates sets the value of the currency.
This means the Federal Reserve cannot remain as it is currently constituted because Congress, as the Constitution requires, is responsible for the currency.
Think about it: it took FDR and Dems in Congress to inflate the dollar from $20/oz to $35/oz. So how come the Federal Reserve now sets the value of the currency and inflates the dollar away?
Check but with Powell it’s as wretched as it gets.
His TDS steers him not logic or what’s best for the economy.
The left cares not who or what goes down as long as they gain control.
Article I, section 8, clause 5: CONGRESS shall have the power...To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin.
This is an exclusive reserved power of Congress, the Executive has nothing to do with it.
I think Powell is out in January.
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