Retirement Party
Just about the last thing the Fed needed at a time when untold millions of Americans can't differentiate fact from fiction, truth from lies and reality from fantasy, was a mini-scandal that aligns with sundry conspiracy theories.
Jerome Powell's language during last week's post-FOMC press conference suggested Robert Kaplan and Eric Rosengren might ultimately be compelled to take one for the team following "revelations" that the two men traded securities last year during the Fed's unprecedented
Yikes. “No, I was not aware of the specifics of what they were doing” is not the most emphatic denial I have ever heard in my life. This doesn’t come at a good time for Powell. If he didn’t know the specifics, what did he know?
No, the optics don’t look good.
We are in the middle of a pandemic. Markets are crashing. Rich people, for a change, are getting somewhat less rich. And the Fed decides to double its balance sheet sending stocks sky high. Meanwhile, as it’s happening, the Fed governors are trading for profit.
No, that doesn’t look great. The public already doesn’t trust the Fed. I don’t trust the Fed. Seems like it’s basically set up just to make rich people richer.
Really? The Fed has also kept the financial system – and real economy – from breaking down, twice in the last two decades.
Granted, the system is, to say the least, flawed. Keeping it working didn’t make the poor rich or the rich poor. But if it stops working, the average rich would be merely very very very affluent; the average poor would be lying in the street.
I think many have an exaggerated idea of what the Fed can and can’t do. Its tools are macro-scale, not granular. It can make the tide rise, it can’t make all the boats equal. That’s up to Congress, states, other parts of government, and ultimately voters.
Yep.
@Elmerfudd: Markets are crashing? Which markets are those?
Our society is way too focused on optics. Kaplan and Rosengren may have obeyed the letter of Fed policies with respect to stock trading but they violated their spirit and now they’re gone — within a week of the news breaking. In my book, that’s decisive action and demonstrates yet again that Powell has a pretty good grasp of this fraught moment in which America finds itself.