Never before has a Fed chair “enjoyed” a lower approval rating among the voting public than Jerome Powell does right now.
That’s according to a new Gallup poll released on Tuesday. Asked how much confidence they have in Powell to do the “right thing for the economy,” a combined 54% of respondents said “only a little” or “almost none.”
Powell, whose star-crossed tenure at the top of the world’s most important institution is a case study in misfortune, now owns the worst approval rating of any Fed chair going back more than two decades.
He might fairly suggest the sample is too small — that, if Gallup tracked public confidence in Fed bosses during the 1970s, for example, he wouldn’t be the least trusted. But… well, it just is what it is.
Actually, though, it isn’t. What it is, I mean. Because like every other poll, the results are hopelessly skewed by partisanship. As Gallup pointed out, Republicans were highly confident in Powell under Donald Trump compared to Democrats (62% to 48%). Republican support for Powell probably would’ve been even higher from 2018 to 2020 had Trump not made a show of demonizing the Fed. By contrast, with Biden in the White House, two-thirds of Democrats trust Powell while less than a third of Republicans do.
Some of the newfound distrust among GOP voters is obviously attributable to the onset of inflation and the Fed’s failure to manage it. But the juxtaposition between how the same man is viewed under different administrations is nevertheless remarkable, if entirely consistent with recent precedent.
The figure below shows the results for the current poll. Note that Republicans, despite harboring serious reservations about Powell, still trust him far more than Janet Yellen.
As alluded to above, this isn’t actually unusual. “Supporters of the president’s party [are] more confident in the president, Fed chair and treasury secretary [and] this is the case even for Fed chairs who — like Powell, Yellen, Bernanke and Alan Greenspan — have served presidents from both major parties,” Gallup remarked.
Notably, Biden’s overall 35% confidence rating vis-à-vis the economy almost matches Bush Jr.’s low point of 34% in 2008, no small feat and worrisome considering the prospect of recession later this year or in 2024, during the campaign.
The real, high-level takeaway from the poll was this: The percentage of respondents expressing a “great deal” or at least a “fair amount” of confidence in the Fed chair, the White House, the Democratic leadership and the Republican leadership, all dropped compared to 2022.
“The result of these changes is that all four leaders earn confidence ratings below 40% in the same year, the first time that has occurred in polling of this question since 2001,” Gallup lamented.
This is yet more evidence of America’s institutional reckoning which, as you might’ve noticed, now encompasses the Supreme Court. As I put it nearly a year ago, every critical pillar of the US government, from the legislature to the high court to the executive to the people in charge of the money, is grappling with an existential credibility crisis.
That state of affairs risks becoming self-fulfilling. A disaffected, divided public will be inclined to view every incremental misstep as additional evidence of ineptitude. And because the country is no longer capable of conceptualizing of itself as a body politic, united in a common purpose, blame for that perceived ineptitude will be apportioned according to the very same identity politics that left the public so riven in the first place.
I blame Fox News. Murdoch is the closest thing living (kinda) to actual evil.
In case you want to dismiss me as obviously biased and partisan, please note that it was Fox News that made the GOP into a joke, a party no longer seriously capable of governing. I never was a conservative but Mitt Romney or John McCain could more or less be trusted (more or less b/c “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” was not a grown up idea) to run things. Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene? God have mercy on us if they ever get executive power (again)…
It’s also Fox News that exquisitely surface every inept, stupid thing done by progressives anywhere in the land. And, yeah, progressives do stupid things, have self imposed idiotic beliefs they can get away with boldly clamouring for on Twitter but doesn’t make a lick of sense in the real world (say, abolishing the police). But anyone with a reasonably functioning brain would point out that a couple of cities asides (Portland, SF), these stupid beliefs have not translated into policies, let alone federal policies. Biden defeated all of his more progressive opponents with ease.
So yeah. Vote for Mitt Romney and I’ll disagree. Vote for Marjorie Taylor Greene and I agree with her we need to split the country in two… Thanks Fox. Thanks Murdoch. Did he really need those few extra billions he made from whipping conservatives into a frenzy since 2008?
Of course they trust Powell more than Yellen, she’s a woman, that’s an automatic 25 point deduction in the Grande Olde Partay.
Corporate money built this. Near total regulatory capture and an echochamber of finger pointing to escape blame for everything falling apart. If partisanship can no longer be blamed, then ethnic and other things will be blamed.
Wealthy sociopaths who are in charge via lobbying. propaganda and religion would rather live behind armed guards, barbed wire, high walls and travel in armored buses to their galas and parties than accept any blame or even an unnoticable “tax burden.”
Partisanship is merely the first scapegoat. This has been going on with our species since we lived in thatch huts.
Pyro – some interesting thoughts there. Like living as a wealthy expat in an emerging nation.
At the corporate level, doesn’t the same apply to some extent when companies relocate to low tax/low service states to bolster their bottom lines? Tax savings for the owners, gated communities & private school tuitions for those who chose to relocate with the company.
Polling people who don’t know the first thing about economics or even their own bank accounts (one thing Trump does know about) is silly. So what if they don’t approve of Powell? He’s not an elected official and is subject to term limits, something that can’t be said about MTG. I’m more concerned about whether these same people still approve of Justice Thomas, a self-confessed crook in our Supreme Court who just flipped off our whole population.
I don’t know. To me it says, Ask an ordinary American a serious question and chances are pretty good you’ll get a dumb response.
The economy evolves dynamically with the ebb and flow of our people and our financial and economic ways.
So maybe a soft landing would have been more likely if the Fed had acted sooner. It may still happen actually. But on the other hand, how can I forget certain facts?
We had a pandemic.
We threw money at it.
The economy kept its head above water.
Biden threw more money at it.
But before all that, there was Trump. One factor in our current state of affairs is this: Trump cut taxes drastically for the wealthiest Americans, leaving most tax payers to pay in greater proportions from a smaller scope of financial resources.
Jerome Powell isn’t the greatest, but he’s hanging in there. He actually could have done much worse. And he’s certainly not the source of greed-fation.
Paul Volcker was very unpopular at times, targeted with political attacks and large protests at the Fed’s building.
In comparison, Elizabeth Warren’s needling and a low Gallup poll are small beer.
Powell knows all that.
When you’re Fed chairman, you don’t need to care what the public or even politicians think. Kind of like when you’re a Supreme Court justice, apparently.