Trump’s Attacks on Powell

Now that President Trump is conceding that he has “no intention of firing” the Federal Reserve’s chairman, Jerome Powell, and “never did,” it’s an apt moment to mark the root cause of the monetary crisis confronting America. That crisis is traced in the collapse of the dollar. The constitutional blame for that debasement of the dollar lies not at the feet of the Federal Reserve, but with the Congress of the United States.It is, after all, to the Congress, and only the Congress, that the Constitution grants the monetary powers of the United States. They are the power to lay and collect taxes, to coin money and regulate the value thereof and of foreign coin, to spend money, to borrow money on the credit of the United States, and to fix the standard of weights and measures. Those are basically the monetary powers, and they belong to the Congress.That suggests the need for, amid a historic plunge in the value of the dollar, a shift in focus away from Mr. Powell and toward Capitol Hill. The lack of such a focus is, to us, the biggest disappointments of Mr. Trump’s second term. The greenback’s convertibility in gold is to what the Sun refers when we speak of the value of the dollar. The value of the greenback has been trading this week at record lows below a 3,500th of an ounce of gold. At a 3,500th of an ounce of gold, the dollar has shed more than 19 percent of its value since Mr. Trump was sworn the second time. Yet he wants the greenback to be even less valuable. We’ve rarely had such a moment of intentional weakening of the dollar since Jimmy Carter was president and W. Michael Blumenthal was Treasury secretary. Rarely in 50 years have we seen such a collapse in the dollar’s value such as has been occurring on Mr. Trump’s watch. So desperate is Mr. Trump for a weaker dollar that he’s taken to railing at the Fed chairman. That was at the top of the Drudge Report just the other day. “Unhinged president ramps up attack on ‘loser’ Powell,” is one headline. “Demands Lower Rates ‘Now’” is another. “Stokes ‘Sell America’ Trade,” is a third, along with “Dollar Trumbles . . . Dow Tumbles.” Another headline boomed: “Survey: Just 13% of Americans Feel Secure About Finances.”By our lights, Mr. Trump is, at this juncture, wise to dial back his attacks on the leadership of the Fed. Better that he direct his criticism to the leadership of the Congress. The Bretton Woods monetary system was ended — and the age of fiat money was begun — amid promises that the dollar would slide only slightly. Since then, in a long and rarely interrupted collapse, it has shed more than almost all of its value in terms of specie.In an editorial this week the Wall Street Journal notes, among other points, that inflation, at 2.5 percent, is still above the Fed’s target. It defends Chairman Powell generally and suggests it’s tariffs that are hurting stocks. All the more reason, as we see it, to turn the criticism toward Congress, which for more than 50 years has failed to address the decision to move to a system of fiat money — and instead left monetary policy to the unelected economists.

Trump’s Attacks on Powell

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