Central bank emphasizes nonpartisan role in brief memo after chair Jerome Powell meets with US president

Central bank emphasizes nonpartisan role in brief memo after chair Jerome Powell meets with US president

The Federal Reserve issued a rare, strongly worded statement on Thursday after chair Jerome Powell spoke with Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday morning, holding firm on the central bank’s independence amid pressure from Trump to lower interest rates.

The three-paragraph statement emphasized the Fed’s independent, non-partisan role in setting monetary policy based on economic data.

Powell told Trump that he and other Fed officials “will set monetary policy, as required by law, to support maximum employment and stable prices and will make those decisions based solely on careful, objective, and non-political analysis”, according to the statement.

  • pezhore@infosec.pub
    5·
    10 days ago

    Yeah, well, about that. https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/24a966.html (note this is a preliminary injunction to allow Trump to fire democrat members of a Congressionally appointed bi-partision governing body - just like the Fed).

    From the dissent:

    The majority closes today’s order by stating, out of the blue, that it has no bearing on “the constitutionality of for-cause removal protections” for members of the Federal Reserve Board or Open Market Committee. Ante, at 2. I am glad to hear it, and do not doubt the majority’s intention to avoid imperiling the Fed. But then, today’s order poses a puzzle. For the Federal Reserve’s independence rests on the same constitutional and analytic foundations as that of the NLRB, MSPB, FTC, FCC, and so on—which is to say it rests largely on Humphrey’s.

    The whole opinion (PDF link) is worth reading, but basically SCOTUS just gave a green light to fire independent board members without cause. The Fed absolutely is in danger, even if the majority of the court thinks that for some magical reason the same legal basis that allows the termination of National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) doesn’t apply.

    There’s a great podcast, Main Justice that goes into this better than I possibly can.