Free Republic

105 days to go!

A good Federal Reserve don’t. Print money, that is. The Federal Reserve prints a lot of money (M2). Unfortunately, it largely benefits elites (the top 1%). The bottom 50% get some benefits, but the gains in net worth largely benefits the elite class. This sounds like a legal Somali daycare scheme. Perhaps The Fed should be renamed “The Federal Quality Learing Center.” Yes, Somalis have daycare centers in Columbus Ohio. Thanks Governor Dewine for doing absolutely nothing to reign in their fraud. /sarc

Financial markets have taken fright amid a resumption of the row over US central bank independence between its chair and the Trump administration. It emerged overnight that the White House was threatening to indict Jerome Powell over comments he made to Congress in relation to renovation cost over-runs at the Federal Reserve buildings in Washington DC. Mr Powell, who has been locked in a feud with Mr Trump over the pace of interest rate cuts since his second term as president began, responded by describing the action as a "pretext" to gain more influence over US monetary policy.

Tensions between a president and a Federal Reserve chairman are nothing new. Up until now, they may have reached a peak when Lyndon Johnson shoved William McChesney Martin at the LBJ ranch. Martin gave in a while later, another step into the inflationary quagmire from which the U.S. emerged only after Paul Volcker reasserted the Fed’s independence. However bad that Texas moment, it falls far short of the Department of Justice’s serving the Federal Reserve with grand jury subpoenas on Friday. They relate to testimony given to the Senate Banking Committee concerning an over-budget renovation project and come with the...

In the annals of political lawfare there’s dumb, and then there’s the criminal subpoena federal prosecutors delivered Friday to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. President Trump would do himself and the country a big favor by firing those responsible for this fiasco. The subpoena relates to testimony Mr. Powell gave to Congress in June concerning renovations to the Fed’s office buildings in Washington, D.C. Those renovations raised a brief ruckus over the summer after Administration officials such as Russ Vought of the Office of Management and Budget accused the Fed of running over budget on a needlessly grandiose project. Fair...

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Sunday that the Justice Department subpoenaed the central bank Friday with the threat of a criminal indictment, the latest move in a yearlong pressure campaign from the Trump administration. Powell said the threatened indictment related to his testimony before the Senate in June about the renovation of Federal Reserve office buildings. "No one — certainly not the chair of the Federal Reserve — is above the law," Powell said. "But this unprecedented action should be seen in the broader context of the administration's threats and ongoing pressure."

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...

Sidney Powell, the one-time Trump legal adviser — who famously failed to “release the Kraken” that would overturn the 2020 election — has flipped. *** ***Powell was in bad odor with both Trump and Giuliani from the minute she started jabbering about Krakens, which Giuliani told the then-president was “crazy s- -t.” Between them they fired her three times, because they thought she was a crackpot. *** But in truth, it didn’t take long after the 2020 election for Giuliani, then Trump’s attorney, to realize that Powell had zero evidence for her farfetched claims, including that Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez...

The job market is on such shaky ground that the Federal Reserve may soon need to cut interest rates to support the economy, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said Friday at a key central banking forum. In one of his most consequential speeches, Powell suggested the labor market could benefit from lower rates, which the Fed has kept unchanged for eight straight months. “Downside risks to employment are rising,” Powell said in prepared remarks for his keynote speech at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s annual economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He said the possibility of Trump’s tariffs having...

Markets had been nearly certain the Fed would cut rates in September, but fresh producer price data are weakening those odds ahead of Chair Jerome Powell’s Jackson Hole speech. While investors still see an 85% chance of a cut, Bank of America now expects rates to hold, warning tariffs and sticky inflation could keep policy tighter for longer. Analysts will be eyeing the back end of this week for the market-moving news. Analysts have long priced in a number of cuts to the base rate in 2025. With just a handful of meetings left to go this year, September has...

The two Federal Reserve governors who dissented from the central bank’s decision to hold interest rates steady this week said they did so, in part, because they worried about the health of the labor market. “While the labor market looks fine on the surface, once we account for expected data revisions, private-sector payroll growth is near stall speed,” Fed Gov. Christopher Waller said in a statement posted on the central bank’s website.

In a rare Presidential visit to the Federal Reserve headquarters, President Donald Trump publicly pressed Fed Chair Jerome Powell to deliver sharp interest rate cuts while criticizing the central bank's $2.5 billion renovation project. What Happened: On Thursday, Trump once again pushed for a rate cut, saying, “I’d love him to lower interest rates,” while standing next to Powell during a tour of the Fed’s headquarters, which is currently under renovation, according to a Reuters report. This visit comes just days before the Fed's rate-setting committee meeting, where the central bank’s 19 policy-makers are widely expected to hold benchmark interest...

President Donald Trump launched a scathing attack on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Thursday, after the central bank again voted to leave interest rates unchanged. "Jerome 'Too Late' Powell has done it again!!! He is TOO LATE, and actually, TOO ANGRY, TOO STUPID, & TOO POLITICAL, to have the job of Fed Chair," Trump posted to Truth Social on Thursday morning. "He is costing our Country TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS," Trump continued, before calling the ongoing renovations to the Fed's D.C. headquarters "one of the most incompetent, or corrupt, renovations of a building(s) in the history of construction!" Newsweek has...

U.S. President Donald Trump will visit the Federal Reserve on Thursday, the White House said, escalating his pressure campaign against Chairman Jerome Powell. This is the first time in nearly two decades that an American president will be making an official trip to the central bank. American presidents have traditionally respected the independence of the Fed, which is insulated both in law and in practice from the political whims of elected officials. Trump’s visit is a remarkable symbolic move on that independence, bringing his drumbeat of criticism over Powell’s refusal to lower interest rates right to the chairman’s doorstep. The...

BREAKING: 🚨 Florida Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna issues CRIMINAL REFERRAL to the Department of Justice on Fed Chair Jerome Powell.— E X X ➠A L E R T S (@ExxAlerts) July 21, 2025

There are several reasons why Jerome Powell should be fired or forced to resign:Powell pretends he cares about budget deficits and inflation, but the cost for the Federal Reserve building renovations surged $700 million past the initial budget, or almost 40%:The Federal Reserve has defended itself from White House criticism that ongoing, costly renovations at the central bank’s headquarters in Washington are the result of mismanagement.Last week, Russel Vought, the director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, said the Fed was turning its headquarters into a ‘palace.’ The cost of the renovation has risen to $2.5 billion,...

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Tuesday that the U.S. central bank would have eased monetary policy by now if not for President Donald Trump’s tariff plan.When asked during a panel if the Fed would have lowered rates again this year had Trump not announced his controversial plan to impose higher levies on imported goods earlier this year, Powell said, “I think that’s right.” “In effect, we went on hold when we saw the size of the tariffs and essentially all inflation forecasts for the United States went up materially as a consequence of the tariffs,” Powell said at European...

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Tuesday that the U.S. central bank would have eased monetary policy by now if not for President Donald Trump’s tariff plan. When asked during a panel if the Fed would have lowered rates again this year had Trump not announced his controversial plan to impose higher levies on imported goods earlier this year, Powell said, “I think that’s right.” “In effect, we went on hold when we saw the size of the tariffs and essentially all inflation forecasts for the United States went up materially as a consequence of the tariffs,” Powell said at...

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is being accused of lying to Congress after he denied that a $2.5 billion revamp of the central bank’s Washington headquarters will load the facility with lavish amenities — and some are demanding that he be punished, The Post has learned. Powell called The Post’s exclusive report in April about the bloated renovation project — which led Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) to liken it to the “Palace of Versailles” during a grilling by the Senate Banking Committee last week — “misleading and inaccurate.” “There’s no VIP dining room, there’s no new marble. There are no...

President Trump on Friday floated the possibility of firing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell as part of his latest round of intense criticism of the leader of the central bank over its decision not to lower interest rates. Trump, in a lengthy post on Truth Social, railed against Powell, labeling him a “numbskull,” “a dumb guy,” “and an obvious Trump Hater.” Trump appointed Powell to the post in 2017. I fully understand that my strong criticism of him makes it more difficult for him to do what he should be doing, lowering Rates, but I’ve tried it all different ways,”...