White House issues dire warning to Wall Street about the Fed
President Biden has made it crystal clear that the Federal Reserve is and will remain politically independent—so long as he’s in charge.
In a recent White House blog post, the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) reminded Americans about “the importance of central bank independence.”
“Research, theory, and evidence all reveal that a central bank’s ability to carry out monetary policy without political interference is a critical component of its ability to control inflation,” the CEA wrote in the blog post.
Lately, the Fed has become a political target of the GOP looking for an inflation scapegoat ahead of the presidential election.
Republican lawmakers even introduced a bill to "end the Fed," citing central bankers’ failure to control inflation. The bill is a long way from ever being passed, but it reflects the Fed's growing politicization.
For Biden, the real danger isn’t the proposed bills. Rather, it’s what could happen if another president comes in and dictates what the central bank can and cannot do.
That’s exactly why the Biden administration put Fed independence at the center of its campaign.
Trump allies envision radically different Fed
According to The Wall Street Journal, Donald Trump’s political allies want to radically reshape how the Fed operates if he wins reelection.
They’ve already drafted a 10-page document with various recommendations on how the Fed should consult the president before setting interest rates or making other important policy decisions.
The recommendations propose giving Trump full power to fire Chairman Jerome Powell before his term expires in 2026.
According to Tobin Marcus, the head of U.S. policy and politics at Wolfe Research, there’s a “small but real chance of a fight over Fed independence early in a second Trump term.”
Marcus hopes that Trump would think twice about meddling with the Fed because of the “likelihood of a negative market reaction, but I have less confidence about that outlook than I’d like.”
Trump’s spat with the Fed began during his first term as president when he accused the central bank of playing political games and being “derelict in its duties.”
At the time, Trump wanted the Fed to lower interest rates and “even, ideally, stimulate.”
Political experts said Trump’s public criticisms of the Fed broke from conventions established by at least three presidents before him.
“From the Clinton administration in 1993 through the Obama administration, there’s been the norm that presidents won’t put pressure on the Fed,” said Kathleen Day, a lecturer at Johns Hopkins Carey School of Business.