Donald Trump’s going to sue Jerome Powell. Or something.
We’re so far afield by now in relation to anything that even remotely approximates normality in American government that I’ve completely exhausted my otherwise illimitable capacity to delineate through satire.
On Tuesday, following a relatively benign CPI report, Trump took to TruthSocial to threaten Powell with a “major lawsuit” in connection with what the administration and its surrogates continue to insist is a criminally wasteful renovation project at the Marriner Eccles building.
I doubt anyone believes the allegations against Powell. I know Trump doesn’t. He knows full well the scope of the upgrades to the Fed’s headquarters and as a developer, he’s apprised that structural repairs come with an enormous price tag. He said so himself late last month when he toured the construction site, even as he insisted, to Powell’s alarm, that the cost of the project now exceeds $3 billion. (In an already famous exchange, Powell disputed the figures on camera, accusing Trump of inflating the numbers by adding the cost of an unrelated, already-completed project.)
In his Tuesday broadside, Trump repeated that dubious $3 billion figure, before suggesting, ludicrously, that the actual cost of the repairs should be closer to $50 million. It’s worth noting that following Trump’s visit to the Eccles building last month, the Fed published pictures on its official Flikr page in an effort to demonstrate the urgency of the repair work. Here are three of those pictures (be sure to read the caption):
Long story short, these aren’t cosmetic repairs. And this isn’t, as Trump claims, a vanity project for Powell, who Trump derided in petulantly merciless terms on Tuesday.
“Steve ‘Manouychin’ really gave me a ‘beauty’ when he pushed this loser,” Trump said, blaming Mnuchin for his own decision to force out Janet Yellen (who, it should be noted, would’ve almost surely been more accommodating than Powell, or at least until Trump started to wax hysterical about the Fed).
Trump went on to say Powell’s done “incalculable” damage to the country. “Fortunately, the economy is sooo good that we’ve blown through Powell and the complacent Board,” he went on, before telling America he’s “considering allowing a major lawsuit against Powell to proceed because of the horrible, and grossly incompetent, job he has done in managing the construction of the Fed Buildings.”
I hate that I have to waste my time and, far more importantly, yours, with this wholly asinine, transparently ridiculous, scapegoating nonsense. Alas, it’s relevant. And eminently so. Every time Trump threatens Powell, it’s another nod to the distinct possibility that the administration will try to force him out ahead of May, when his term as Chair ends.
Trump will have one sycophant on the Fed Board (Stephen Miran) starting next month. According to multiple reports, Scott Bessent’s search for Powell’s replacement now includes everyone from the two Kevins (Hassett and Warsh) to Chris Waller to Jim Bullard to Michelle Bowman to Philip Jefferson to Lorie Logan. If all else fails, I’m sure there are plenty of people at Fox willing to take the job.
I’d be remiss (completely) not to note that this — threatening Powell with a lawsuit for not cutting rates — is precisely the sort of tactic you see from autocrats in systems that aren’t democracies but aren’t full-on dictatorships. No, Powell won’t be jailed. But he might be sued. Or audited. Or otherwise harassed for the crime of not appeasing the head of state.
Only people benefitting from this are the lawyers; government suing its own public bodies.
You forgot to add Trump recommending that Goldman Sachs fire Hatzius and calling David Solomon a failed DJ….
Yeah. I mean, I can’t — it’s hard to know how to satirize this anymore. It’s so unbelievably — surreally — juvenile that you just have to ignore him or else you’ll be spending all day editorializing around his social media feed.
Incidentally, how many times did I warn earlier this year that it was just a matter of time before Trump started pressuring big bank CEOs to crack down on analysts and strategists? Let’s see how many of these guys who put their tax rate before their principles when it came time to vote in November will still be lovin’ Trump when he gets them fired.
Is their obtuseness less than all the Trump voting Medicaid recipients who will lose coverage in time, or the Trump voters who’ve been DOGED, or car dealership owners whose profits are impacted by rising tariffs, or male Hispanics whose non-violent friends are deported, (perhaps to a dangerous prison somewhere they’ve never lived), or for that matter perhaps Home Builders or REIT owners and investors who may have to cope down the road with the administration losing long end rates?
Thought about this too when i first saw the news. Sooner than i expected.
Importantly: are there ways to stop or reverse all these while he controls military (and has support from militia groups), massive propaganda machines, congress, and courts? Absent surprising turns of events (which are plenty in history, i was told), answer seems to be “no” from logical reasoning.
So pragmatically: what would be the near- to medium-term market implications of the authoritarian turn? In the long term, all go south; in the short term, though, structurally there are no viable alternatives to USD assets for many of the world’s largest asset allocators.
So, why should stonks crash if unemployment is zero, inflation is exactly 2%, the Fed returns to ZIRP and opens the easy money spigots, Treasury deploys YCC and foreign central banks keep buying US Treasuries? Why shouldn’t SPX hit 12000 by the mid terms? After all money and value are all just made up numbers Peter always pays Paul, and if enough people in charge of capital believe it all, isn’t that reality? A machine like that can go for awhile before the pistons seize up.
Sounds likely, if people’s tendency (that’s often highlighted by H here) to deny what’s actually happening and move the “decency” threshold continues….
I’ve assumed all along that all the Fed names Trump and company trot out are designed to keep the media’s interest and serve as a smokescreen for the real plan. Trump wants a photogenic sycophant. Fox is loaded with such talent, though he could have someone in mind from the Heritage Foundation or somewhere else that most ppl have never heard of. Or maybe he appoints himself.
BLM? Powell? and now Goldman? Who cares in much of America? To quote Deam Wormer: zero.zero
Versus “Dana White says UFC Fight Night at White House ‘going to happen'”
The only question is how much it’ll cost me to bring our Dear Leader to the match.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/07/hitler-attacked-central-banker/683545/
I guess we’re not going to talk about pedophilia and Jeffrey Epstein’s former associates any more.
Are the numbers in on the cost to “prepare” el presidente’s gifted 747 for service? Would be interesting to see the actual accounting of that farce.
Also just out of curiousity: If the economy is “soooo good”, what’ s the emergency (or “emergy”) again, which was used to justify the tariffs?