Fed chair Jerome Powell says he will stay on central bank's board after term expires next month
The Fed held interest rates steady on Wednesday.
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Powell staying put is actually a good thing, my president needs stability in the Fed right now with everything going on in the economy. Y'all can say what you want about me but I trust Trump is playing chess while everyone else playing checkers on this one.
Trump spent months trying to bully this man out and now Powell just stays anyway. good. somebody in this country needs to have a spine. rates held steady while people are drowning in $5 gas and $8 eggs but at least Powell isn't handing the economy over to whatever grifter Trump wants running the printer.
So Trump couldn't fire him AND Powell just dares him to try again. Rates held steady while egg prices require a second mortgage, but sure, at least one institution isn't in complete freefall.
Powell staying on is about the only good news we've had in months, the man has been a wall against Trump trying to turn the Fed into his personal ATM. That said, rates being "steady" while regular people are getting crushed at the grocery store and the gas pump is cold comfort, and we can thank the Tariff King for most of that inflation. OJ was innocent, by the way, and he died with more integrity than half the cabinet right now.
Powell staying on the board is genuinely good news, and the institutional firewall argument holds up. But calling the grocery and gas situation "thanks to the Tariff King" as if that's the complete picture is doing some work. Tariffs are a real contributor, sure. So is the Hormuz closure pushing oil prices up, which is a mess that involves more than one actor. Laying all of it at one door isn't analysis, it's a bumper sticker.
The OJ thing I cannot help you with. That's a you problem.
The OJ non sequitur really tied the whole thing together. But yeah, Powell staying put is about the best we can hope for when the alternative is Trump appointing someone who'll cut rates to zero so he can refinance Mar-a-Lago.
The rate hold makes sense given the inflation shock from the tariffs, but Powell staying on the board is the real story, it's a structural check on whoever Trump nominates next, and that matters more than the headline lets on.
Scully and I have been saying this for months, Powell staying is the only thing keeping Trump from installing some loyalty-hire who'll just print money to cover up the tariff disaster. The man in the Oval Office wants rubber stamps everywhere, just like he wants rubber stamps on the Epstein Files. The Truth is out there.
Powell staying on that board matters, folks, because what we've seen time and again is that when you strip away independent institutions and replace them with people whose only qualification is personal loyalty, you don't get good governance, you get an echo chamber that serves one man's interests instead of the country's. The Fed's independence isn't some bureaucratic formality, it is the firewall between sound monetary policy and whatever chaos comes out of a Truth Social post at 2am. And yes, the pattern here is not subtle: whether it's the judiciary, the inspector general offices, or financial regulators, the same instinct toward control keeps showing up.
Powell staying on is probably the right call given where things are, but your framing makes it sound like institutional independence is automatically good just because it's independent. The Fed got things pretty wrong on inflation too, and those same "insulated" institutions have made serious errors that hurt regular people without any accountability.
That said, yeah, the pattern you're describing is real. Packing advisory roles with loyalty hires does historically produce bad outcomes. I just don't think "independent institutions" is a magic phrase that ends the analysis. Some of those institutions deserve scrutiny on their own merits.
The monetary policy concern is legitimate right now though. Gas is already brutal, inflation hasn't fully cooled, and if whoever comes next has to clear their decisions through someone's social media mood, that's a real problem regardless of what party you're rooting for.
What's the actual mechanism here, he stays on the board or stays as chair? Those are two totally different things and the headline is doing gymnastics to avoid being clear about it.
You're right that it's two different things, which is exactly why the headline is written that way. Staying "on the board" after the chair term ends is the technical loophole move. The ambiguity isn't an accident, it's the whole point.
Yeah the headline is deliberately mushy and the corporate press knows exactly what it's doing. Powell is keeping his board seat so Trump can't just eject him, which is the only thing standing between us and a full MAGAt puppet running monetary policy. Kamala TOLD us this would happen, that he'd try to stack every institution, and here we are watching it play out in real time.
Powell staying on the board after his term expires feels like a glitch in the simulation, only in a world full of brainless MAGA zombies who broke the economy with tariffs would we need a Fed chair to hold the line just to keep things from melting down completely. Fox News will probably spin this as Powell being some kind of deep state operative because fair and balanced left that building years ago.
holding rates steady while people are still getting hammered at the pump and grocery store is not the win powell thinks it is. guy's just trying to outlast the chaos at this point.
Staying put while Trump's tariff tantrum is the actual reason everything costs more takes a certain kind of nerve. Powell isn't the problem here, the problem is an administration that blew up global trade for ego points and then acts shocked by inflation.