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Every living former chair of the Federal Reserve, as well as a slew of ex-Treasury secretaries and former White House economic advisors, urged the Supreme Court not to allow President Donald Trump to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook as her lawsuit challenging her removal is pending. Signers included ex-Fed chairs Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen; ex-Treasury secretaries Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Hank Paulson, Jack Lew, and Timothy Geithner; and ex-CEA chairs Glenn Hubbard, Greg Mankiw, Christina Romer, Cecilia Rouse, Jared Bernstein, and Jason Furman.

President Donald Trump has asked the Supreme Court to allow him to fire Federal Reserve board member Lisa Cook, setting up a test of the president’s ability to take control of the powerful interest-rate setting body. The Justice Department on Thursday asked the high court to reverse the decisions of two lower courts that allowed Cook to remain in her position while the broader legal fight is underway. Their decisions enabled Cook to participate in a meeting this week that resulted in a quarter-point reduction in the interest rate. Trump’s incursion on the Federal Reserve is the culmination of his...

The chart below shows gold holdings (in yellow) and US Treasuries holdings as a percentage of foreign reserves. Gold is now a larger holding than US Treasuries for the first time in 30 years. We might be witnessing one of the most significant global rebalancing we’ve experienced in recent history, in my view. Where’s the World’s Gold Really Sitting? This chart shows the official gold reserves by country and the numbers are surprising. US has 8,133 tonnes—by far the leader. Then comes Germany (3,350 tonnes), Italy (2,452 tonnes), France (2,437 tonnes), Russia (2,330 tonnes), China (2,299 tonnes) and Switzerland (1,040...

Perhaps the only thing that might stop the Federal Reserve from cutting interest rates in a few weeks would be a surprisingly strong U.S. jobs report. Just don’t count on it. Hiring has slowed sharply since the spring after the Trump administration launched the biggest trade wars in decades. Even with those trade disputes dying down, businesses have been slow to add new employees. The U.S. economy added an average of only 35,000 new jobs from May through July, marking the smallest three-month increase since the pandemic in 2020. Wall Street isn’t expecting a big uptick in August, either. A...

They politicized the central bank under Obama and Biden, including by appointing Lisa Cook.It’s hard not to gag over the dirges in the press for the Federal Reserve’s “independence.” Or the encomiums to Gov. Lisa Cook, the Biden appointee President Trump fired last week, who has become a martyr for a cause Democrats didn’t much care about when they were in charge of Washington. “How the Future of the Fed Came to Rest on Lisa Cook” was a front-page New York Times headline on Saturday. Please. Democrats during the Obama and Biden presidencies tried to co-opt the central bank to...

President Donald Trump is attempting to fire Lisa Cook, one of the board members of the Federal Reserve. Mainstream commentators have described this as an unprecedented attack on the Fed's autonomy—no president has ever dismissed a member of the board, which is supposed to operate independent of political pressure—while conservatives say the allegations against Cook make her a special case. (Many libertarians, on the other hand, care less about tinkering with the Fed's composition and instead want to abolish it outright.) The Trump administration has accused Cook of committing mortgage fraud; William Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency,...

Good thing Jackie Alemany, co-host of MSNBC's The Weekend, wasn't being dramatic on Sunday. Otherwise, she might have said something like "The continued existence of all life on earth hangs in the balance!" Instead, the utterly undramatic Alemany merely said that if Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook was fired, "The stability of the global economy hangs in the balance." Alemany warned that global markets could enter a "red zone" if Cook's tenure went kaput.Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

A key leader in the world economy is warning that undue interference in the Federal Reserve’s operations by President Donald Trump could pose a serious economic risk to the U.S. and the rest of the world. European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said in an interview with Radio Classique on Monday that efforts to remove Fed Chair Jerome Powell or Fed Governor Lisa Cook would “represent a very serious danger for the U.S. economy and the world economy.” “If U.S. monetary policy were no longer independent and instead dependent on the dictates of this or that person, then I believe...

Lisa Cook is, or was, a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. President Trump wrote Cook a letter, firing her for cause, i.e., mortgage fraud. He announced the firing on Truth Social:Rather than going quietly, Cook responded by suing Trump and others, alleging that grounds for her firing do not exist and asking for declaratory and injunctive relief to that effect. It alleges that Trump’s grounds for firing Cook are pretextual, and the firing is an attack on the Fed’s vaunted independence. The Cook cases raises several issues. The Federal Reserve Act says that the president...

US Homeland Security News @defense_civil25 🚨Alert: President Trump orders US Marshals to remove Defiant Fed Governor Lisa Cook after she refuses to step down!

It’s time to call a spade a spadeThe notion that the Fed is some kind of sterling institution needs to be put to bed. This is particularly true of the Powell Fed which has experienced multiple scandals involving criminal activity. The fact that no one went to jail because “laws are for little people” doesn’t absolve the Fed.Let’s wind back the clocks.During the pandemic, when millions of people were losing their jobs, despairing of their futures, and terrified of dying, senior Fed officials were making MILLIONS of dollars trading on insider information based on Fed policy decisions.Specifically, three Fed Presidents,...

Mr. Trump has resisted his itch to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell on the savvy advice that he could rattle markets and trigger an extended court battle. But Ms. Cook said Tuesday she’ll challenge her removal, so Mr. Trump will still get his legal fight in what could be a landmark case. The Cook firing is a calculated putsch. Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte teed up the dismissal last week when he posted a criminal referral for Ms. Cook on social media. He said she may have committed mortgage fraud by claiming two different homes as primary residences...

Summary Trump says he has 'cause' to remove Fed governor Cook's lawyer says she will take matter to court Another open board seat could boost Trump's influence over Fed Market reaction to Trump's move on Cook muted WASHINGTON, Aug 26 (Reuters) - Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook will file a lawsuit to prevent President Donald Trump from firing her, a lawyer for the embattled central bank official said on Tuesday, kicking off what could be a protracted legal fight over the White House's effort to shape U.S. monetary policy."His attempt to fire her, based solely on a referral letter, lacks...

The first Black woman to serve on the Federal Reserve board, Ms. Cook has long been a pathbreaker in a field dominated by white men.Years before Lisa Cook became President Trump’s latest target in his effort to exert control over the Federal Reserve, she wrote about her experience as one of a relative handful of Black women in a field long dominated by white men.“Economics is neither a welcoming nor a supportive profession for women,” she and a colleague wrote in a New York Times opinion essay in 2019. She added, “But if economics is hostile to women, it is...

A top official at the US Federal Reserve says she will not be "bullied" after President Donald Trump called for her resignation over an allegation of mortgage fraud. Governor Lisa Cook has been accused of falsifying documents and property records in a bid to get more favourable home loan. She said the claim stemmed from an application before she joined the central bank. The Trump administration is also pursuing mortgage fraud investigations against Senator Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James, both political antagonists of the president. Trump has been seeking more influence over the US central bank...

U.S. stock futures were lower Tuesday, adding to a slide in the major averages to start the week, after President Donald Trump removed Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook from the board of the central bank....Trump’s unprecedented move adds to the pressure the president has been putting on the central bank’s independence. By law, a president may only remove Fed governor “for cause.” As a result, it is possible the matter will be challenged in the courts.

US President Donald Trump has said he will immediately remove Federal Reserve official Lisa Cook from her position, in a major escalation in his battle against the US central bank. He said there was "sufficient reason" to believe Cook had made false statements on mortgage agreements, and cited constitutional powers which he said allowed him to remove her. In response, Cook said Trump had no authority to fire her and she would not resign.

President Trump fired Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook Monday over allegations that she committed mortgage fraud. “Pursuant to my authority under Article Il of the Constitution of the United States and the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, as amended, you are hereby removed from your position on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, effective immediately,” Trump wrote in a letter addressed to Cook, which he posted on Truth Social. Cook, however, argued that Trump has “no authority” to fire her and indicated that she’s not leaving her post, in a statement. “President Trump purported to fire me ‘for...

President Biden's nominee for governor of the Federal Reserve has said repeatedly that she supports reparations, the controversial proposed policy of financial compensation for Black Americans as a form of atonement for slavery and discrimination. "Everybody benefited from slavery. Everybody," Lisa Cook, a Michigan State University professor, said in a September 2020 "EconTalk" podcast. "So, I think that we absolutely need some sort of reckoning with that. There are many proposals on the table to study the possibility of reparations, many economic proposals being put forward, and I think they should all be taken seriously." Biden said during the 2020...

Key Points President Donald Trump said he is removing Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook from her position. Trump said there is sufficient reason to believe Cook made “false statements” on one or more mortgage agreements. “I will not resign,” said Cook, who hired high-profile attorney Abbe Lowell to challenge her purported termination. Trump has complained for months that Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has not lowered interest rates. =============================================================== President Donald Trump on Monday said he had fired Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook, an unprecedented and dramatic escalation of his attacks on the U.S. central bank’s independence over its...