All Eyes Are on Jerome Powell as We Hurtle Toward November and the Fed’s Political Window Is Closing Fast

The most important person other than Presidents Biden and Trump in determining the outcome of the 2024 presidential election may well be the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell.If Mr. Powell says inflation is finished and cuts interest rates, the stock market will soar, mortgage rates will drop, and the economy will grow faster. If Mr. Powell says inflation isn’t yet fully conquered and keeps interest rates where they are, the stock market will sag, mortgage rates will tick up, and layoffs will accelerate, leading to the kind of “stagflation” that cost President Carter the 1980 election.The biggest risk to Mr. Powell and the bureaucracy he leads is that of the American public — or, for that matter, Messrs. Biden or Trump — realizing the political significance of the Fed’s role. The public, or the presidential candidates, might then conclude it’s crazy, or unconstitutional, to have the presidential election outcome depend on the decisions not so much of voters but of a powerful unelected bureaucrat such as Mr. Powell.That explains Mr. Powell’s comments Sunday night on “60 Minutes,” in response to CBS News’s Scott Pelley’s reasonable question: “Your decisions inevitably are going to have a bearing on this year’s election. And I wonder, to what degree does politics determine your timing?”Mr. Powell replied: “We do not consider politics in our decisions. We never do. And we never will.” Mr. Powell went on to claim that “the historical record really backs that up. People have gone back and looked.”That’s questionable. There are technical, methodological issues that matter a lot. A 2005 paper by Tony Caporale and Kevin Grier found that “political change is an important determinant of monetary policy (as measured by short-term real interest rates) in the United States.”Mr. Powell insisted, “we are a non-political organization.” Mr. Pelley pressed on: “There are people watching this interview who are skeptical about that.” Mr. Pelley sure got that right.Mr. Powell responded: “You know, I would just say this. Integrity is priceless. And at the end, that’s all you have. And we in, we plan on keeping ours.”I’m not questioning Mr. Powell’s integrity. His decisions are apolitical in that they are informed by data and by the other voting members of the Federal Open Market Committee. Bear in mind, though, that if the Founders of America wanted monetary policy to be immune entirely to politics, they wouldn’t have granted between 99 percent and 101 percent of the monetary powers to our government’s most political branch, the Congress.There might be no sign that Mr. Powell’s decisions are calculated with eyes toward boosting Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump. President Obama named Mr. Powell to the Fed board in 2012. Mr. Trump elevated him to the chairmanship for a term that began in 2018. Mr. Biden reappointed him to a second term as chairman that began in 2022. The Fed, though, is one of the least transparent bodies in our system. Mr. Trump told Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo on February 2 that if elected president, he wouldn’t reappoint Powell as chairman. “I think he’s going to do something to probably help the Democrats, you know, I think, if he lowers interest rates,” Mr. Trump said, in remarks that got less attention than Mr. Powell’s “60 Minutes” comments. “It looks to me like he’s trying to lower interest rates for the sake of maybe getting people elected.…I think he’s political, yeah.”Yet the reality is that the strong desire to appear apolitical itself affects the Fed’s moves. Call it an “institutional imperative,” to borrow a phrase from Warren Buffett. The calendar shows Open Market Committee meetings scheduled for March 19 to March 20, April 30 to May 1, and June 11 to June 12. If Mr. Powell waits much beyond May 1, a rate cut would look more and more like a campaign-season political favor to Democrats. That would carry a cost to the Fed’s carefully cultivated reputation for being “non-political.” If Mr. Powell can pull it off — conquering inflation while keeping unemployment reasonably low and economic growth reasonably strong, all far enough in advance of the presidential election to appear apolitical — it will be a central banking technical triumph sufficient to vault him into the ranks of the all-time greats.The only thing greater would be an economic system in which citizens didn’t have to estimate discounts on the value of their dollars based on the approach of a presidential election.

All Eyes Are on Jerome Powell as We Hurtle Toward November and the Fed’s Political Window Is Closing Fast

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