Watch Fed Chair Powell Get Asked About Why He Went to a Jeff Bezos Party

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is grilled by Representative Katie Porter, a California Democrat, during his semi-annual congressional testimony Tuesday for his attendance at a party thrown by Amazon.com Inc. Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos last month.

Trump Says He Could Demote Fed Chair Powell, Risking More Market Turmoil

At a time of grave investor uncertainty over the coronavirus, economists warned that the president could throw fuel on the fire.

President Trump said on Saturday that he had the power to remove or demote Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, renewing a long-running threat against the central bank’s leader at a time when it could further roil volatile markets.

Mr. Trump said in a news conference at the White House that ousting Mr. Powell was not his current plan but that he was “not happy with the Fed” because it was “following” and “we should be leading.” He said he had the right to remove Mr. Powell as chair “and put him in a regular position and put somebody else in charge,” but added, “I haven’t made any decisions on that.”

While it was a familiar threat from a president who has continually beaten up on Mr. Powell, it was made in the midst of growing concern that the spread of the coronavirus could tip the United States into a recession.

The mere hint that Mr. Trump could fire Mr. Powell, or demote him to a Fed governor, risks further destabilizing markets by worrying investors, who are already fretting over the economic fallout from shut-down businesses, quarantined workers and curtailed activity.

Investors have been looking to the Fed to help contain the economic fallout, and Mr. Powell led his colleagues in slashing interest rates by half a percentage point in one of the earliest global central bank responses to the coronavirus. The Fed has also been active in soothing disorderly markets over the past week.

If he removed Jerome Powell, it would be hugely destabilizing to markets,” said Ernie Tedeschi, a policy economist at Evercore ISI in Washington. “The market trusts Jerome Powell to do what monetary policy can do. Jerome Powell gets it.”

As coronavirus cases mount globally, upending supply chains, canceling travel plans, emptying restaurants and closing offices, analysts are penciling in an increasingly severe economic impact. Some now expect the United States to fall into a recession this year.

That has caused a dramatic sell-off in stocks and wild moves across corporate and government bond markets. The Fed has been intervening to keep the financial system functioning smoothly.

The central bank’s policy-setting committee meets this week in Washington, and it is widely expected to cut interest rates — perhaps to near zero — at or before that gathering. It could also renew bond buying or roll out other emergency programs meant to stabilize the inner workings of financial markets, economists expect.

Mr. Trump probably does not have the legal authority to fire Mr. Powell, whom he nominated in 2017 but who was confirmed by Congress. It is less clear whether the president could demote him, but if he tried, the Federal Open Market Committee — which sets interest rates — could still select Mr. Powell as its leader, rendering any new chair mostly irrelevant.

This is not the first time Mr. Trump has aired the idea of removing his hand-selected Fed chair. In December 2018, after the Fed raised rates, the president privately talked about firing Mr. Powell, telling advisers that the Fed chair would “turn me into Hoover,” a reference to the Great Depression-era president Herbert Hoover. The statements caused jitters on Wall Street.

Mick Mulvaney, who had recently been named the acting White House chief of staff, said in a subsequent television interview that Mr. Trump “now realizes he does not have the authority to fire” the Fed chair.

This time around, Mr. Tedeschi said he doubted the president would try to demote Mr. Powell, and was probably just trying to jawbone the central bank ahead of its meeting this week.

“I think people are used to it, at this point,” he said. “But it probably doesn’t help.”

Wall Street’s Addiction to Debt (w/ William Cohan)

New York Times’ bestselling author, former M&A investment banker, and long-time financial journalist, William Cohan, joins Ed Harrison to discuss the perilous state of U.S. credit markets, quantitative easing, junk bonds, and the ever-expanding pool of global debt. Predicated on the idea that persistently low interest rates have fueled distortions in the pricing of risk, Cohan argues that Wall Street has been developing a dangerous dependency that won’t end profitably for the majority of investors. Filmed on January 7, 2020, in New York.

Fed Could Hit Back at Trump, a Former Top Official Suggests

WASHINGTON — A former top Federal Reserve official implied that the central bank should consider allowing President Trump’s trade war to hurt his 2020 election chances, an assertion that drew a firestorm of criticism and a rare pushback from the Fed itself.

William Dudley, the former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and now a research scholar at Princeton University, said in a Bloomberg Opinion piece that “Trump’s re-election arguably presents a threat to the U.S. and global economy.” Mr. Dudley added that “if the goal of monetary policy is to achieve the best long-term economic outcome, then Fed officials should consider how their decisions will affect the political outcome in 2020.”

It is a controversial statement, particularly coming from an official who ranked among the Fed’s most powerful policymakers as recently as 2018. It also comes at a sensitive moment for the Fed, which has been under attack from Mr. Trump and trying to assert its independence from the White House and politics in general.

“The Federal Reserve’s policy decisions are guided solely by its congressional mandate to maintain price stability and maximum employment,” Michelle Smith, a Fed spokeswoman, said when asked about the column. “Political considerations play absolutely no role.”

Mr. Trump has waged a yearlong campaign to pressure the Fed to cut rates, accusing the central bank of hurting the economy by keeping rates too high and putting the United States at a disadvantage to other nations, like China and Germany.

The Federal Reserve loves watching our manufacturers struggle with their exports to the benefit of other parts of the world,” Mr. Trump said in a tweet on Tuesday. “Has anyone looked at what almost all other countries are doing to take advantage of the good old USA? Our Fed has been calling it wrong for too long!”

The attacks have put the Fed on the defensive, prompting top officials including Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, to insist that the central bank sets policy to achieve economic goals without taking politics into account.

The Fed cut rates for the first time in more than a decade in July and has kept the door open to future cuts, with Mr. Powell saying the central bank is prepared to act to protect the economy against slowing global growth and as Mr. Trump’s trade fights stoke uncertainty.

Mr. Dudley essentially said the Fed should wade into politics, arguing that the central bank should consider the political ramifications of the policy decisions it makes. By lowering interest rates to offset economic harm caused by Mr. Trump’s trade war with China, Mr. Dudley said the central bank could give the White House room to ramp up trade tensions.

“The central bank’s efforts to cushion the blow might not be merely ineffectual,” he wrote. “They might actually make things worse.”

The opinion piece comes as the Fed has been under attack from Mr. Trump and trying to assert its independence from the White House and politics in general.
CreditLexey Swall for The New York Times

Fed watchers responded to Mr. Dudley’s piece with widespread concern, asserting that it could feed conspiracy theories that the central bank is trying to influence political outcomes.

“The Fed for decades has scrupulously avoided doing that, and has tried to avoid giving that perception,” said Adam Posen, the president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “And this isn’t some ‘deep state’ fake: They genuinely don’t want to get into it, because ultimately they are accountable to Congress.”

Mr. Trump announced an escalation of the trade war with China just a day after the Fed cut rates in July, and the concern that Fed policy is enabling the tariffs is often repeated by analysts. Michael Strain at the American Enterprise Institute said it was a valid point to raise and consider.

But Mr. Strain pushed back against the idea that the Fed’s policymakers should try to guide political outcomes.

“It’s wildly irresponsible,” he said. “The Fed is not elected; it is appointed. It has a responsibility to adhere to a narrow reading of its mandate.”

The central bank’s leadership consists of 12 regional presidents, who are selected by businesspeople and community leaders from their districts and who share four annually rotating votes on interest rates. The New York Fed president is the most powerful regional leader and has a constant vote on policy.

The rate-setting committee also includes seven governors who are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Only five of those positions are currently filled, although Mr. Trump has said he intends to nominate another two members to the Fed.

The Fed does not answer to the White House by design: It is removed from politics so that it will make better long-term decisions for the economy, rather than trying to goose the economy going into election years. It is, however, responsible to Congress, which can change the rules that govern it.

That insulation has, historically, helped to fuel criticism that the Fed is removed from the public and in the pocket of bankers. The central bank has long been the target of conspiracy theories, and popular books about it have borne titles like “Secrets of the Temple.”

More recently, the president has placed the central bank firmly in political cross hairs. In a Twitter post last week, he asked whether Mr. Powell or President Xi Jinping of China was a “bigger enemy” of the United States. Mr. Trump has reportedly considered firing or demoting Mr. Powell in the past, and he recently told reporters that he would accept Mr. Powell’s resignation if it were offered.

Despite that pressure campaign, Fed officials have repeatedly pushed back against the idea that they would in any way take the White House’s comments or potential actions into account when setting policy.

“We’re never going to take political considerations into account or discuss them as part of our work,” Mr. Powell said at a news conference in January. “We’re human. We make mistakes. But we’re not going to make mistakes of character or integrity.”