Trump's stupid bullying of Jerome Powell is analogous to his stupid bullying of Canada's Justin Trudeau and now Mark Carney

Jerome Powell doesn't set interest rates.

 

The Federal Open Market Committee sets interest rates. That's why the release of the committee's prior meeting minutes is always keenly awaited and is by itself a major market mover. Powell's is one vote among many on the FOMC:

 

Where interest rates should be today, and when they should be reduced, is already a topic of debate inside the Fed, a decision, it should be noted, that cannot be made unilaterally by the chair. Powell’s leadership and professionalism does not appear to be a concern within the halls of the central bank. Certainly, none of his colleagues, present or past, have made the case that he is incompetent. 

 

 

Similarly the Canadian Prime Ministers' control over trade decisions is also muted, deferring as they must to provincial and territorial authorities.

 

Trump bullies people like this who cannot make unilateral changes to policy in order to make himself look like an assertive leader to his equally stupid followers.

 

That's why people like Larry Kudlow disgust me. He knows what I am writing is true, but he joins in on the pig pile nonetheless. 

 

Greater things are at stake in this than interest rate policy. Trump is playing with fire. 

  

Now the disgusting Larry Kudlow piles on Jay Powell

 

Can Jay Powell Make It Through the Weekend?

Larry Kudlow, New York Sun

This dope who works for Trump can barely speak English, is just looking for any way he can to oust Fed Chair Jay Powell

These people make me sick.

 

The renovations were approved in 2021 and won't be finished until long after Powell leaves next May. 

 

Trump budget chief Vought ramps up criticism of Powell, vows investigation into Fed renovations

It's an investigation with a pre-drawn conclusion, that's all.

... “When you go to the nation’s mall, you see the construction of this palace ... upwards of $2.5 billion massive cost overrun, and we want to make sure we have facts as to the largesse and the extent to which it’s overrun,” Vought said during a “Squawk Box” interview. “I think it just points to the fundamental mismanagement of the Fed under the chairman.” ... 

″The problem with Chairman Powell is he has been late at every turn,” Vought said. “It’s time to lower rates. You have a problem there. But again, this is about the largesse and the fact that he has systemically mismanaged the Fed, and that is evident by what we’re seeing with regard to this monstrosity, this Palace of Versailles, on the National Mall.” ... 

“This certainly has to do with the fiscal mismanagement of the Fed, of which [interest rates] is one aspect of it,” he said. “We are going to zoom in over the last several days on this. We have new commissioners at the National Capital Planning Commission who are asking very tough questions.” ...

Ron Insana: Why Trump’s new attack on Powell should be so troubling to investors

... If I were a foreign investor witnessing the ouster of a Fed chair, replaced by a presidential supplicant, I’d sell the dollar and U.S. bonds and head for the hills. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

Methinks J. D. Vance doth protest too much about Jerome Powell

 

It backfired on Powell, though.

 

Yields climbed in response. 10Y went from 3.63 on Sep 16 to 4.37 by Nov 1. And core PCE inflation shot back up.

 

It's proof yet again that the Fed has next to no control over interest rates. It's one of the great myths of our time that it does, a myth Vance believes.

 

If Powell had cut and Kamala won, irrespective of what rates or inflation did, Vance might have an argument. He should quit complaining and take the win.

 

Meanwhile core PCE inflation was 2.66 in Sep 2024, same as it was in Mar 2025.

 

You'd think twice about trying that again, too, if you got burned like that, especially if you're being hectored by the tag-team wrestlers of the Oval Orifice.

 

 

 

It's stupid for Trump to riff off today's producer price report and call Jay Powell names because the number is likely to be revised higher, and besides, that's just poor form, old boy

 

 May 2025 core producer prices, aka core wholesale prices, were reported today up 3.02% year over year. That will doubtlessly be revised up, especially as we get farther away from May.

Today's chart indicates April was up 3.18% yoy, but was originally reported at 3.1%. The latter was already rounded up, but the former rounds up to 3.2%. We'll see if that gets revised higher in coming months as well.

March was up 3.91% yoy we are told today, but originally it was reported at 3.3%.

February was up 3.74%, but originally reported at 3.4%.

January was up 3.92%, but originally reported at 3.6%.

December was up 3.74%, but originally reported at 3.5%.

The average up revision, including April, has been 0.3. 

Be that as it may, we have in the May report nine consecutive months with core producer prices up in excess of 3% year over year.

Meanwhile for the nine years 2012-2020, the average increase was 1.62% yoy. I don't call producer prices rising at a rate 85% higher than that in May 2025 good news. It may be "less bad" news, but that doesn't make it good news.

Trump's a jerk to Powell. Vance is a very polished jerk. Remember his treatment of Zelenskyy? Stephen Miller is a jerk to Rand Paul. If you've seen the Trump cabinet in action, many of whom are political losers, you've seen even more insulting jerks. They may be descendants of the people of Jerkola for all I know, but I can only speculate.

 

 

  

 

What they lack in intelligence they make up for in bad manners

 

Trump calls Fed chief Powell ‘numbskull’ as he urges interest rate cut

 

... Trump claimed at the White House that lowering rates by 2 percentage points would save the U.S. $600 billion per year, “but we can’t get this guy to do it.” “We’re going to spend $600 billion a year, $600 billion because of one numbskull that sits here [and says] ‘I don’t see enough reason to cut the rates now,’” Trump said. ...

Trump’s insult came hours after the Labor Department reported that U.S. producer prices rose less in May than some economists anticipated. ...

 

‘Immaturity’: Rand Paul rips White House after being ‘uninvited’ from picnic 

 

... “I’ve just been told that I’ve been uninvited from the picnic; I think I’m the first senator in the history of the United States to be uninvited to the White House picnic,” Paul told reporters. “The White House is owned by the taxpayers, we are all members of it, every Democrat will be invited, every Republican will be invited, but I will be the only one disallowed to come on the grounds of the White House.” ... 

 

Trump calls Powell a fool for not lowering rates, yields rise in response lol

 

Trump calls Fed Chair Jerome Powell a ‘fool’ after central bank keeps rates steady again

 

 

 

Mad King Ludwig is in a foul mood this Easter Monday because the Supreme Court ruined his weekend deportation plans

 Trump ramps up attacks on Powell, demands ‘loser’ Fed chair lower rates ‘NOW’

 

The Fed Chair Jerome Powell gave them what they wanted, a one quarter point interest rate cut, and the spoiled markets threw a fit anyway because of what he said about next year

The S&P 500 Equal Weight Index is down almost 7% this month, to date.

Meanwhile, more inflation for the rest of us, which Powell has never really tried to stop. You know, like Christianity hasn't failed, it just hasn't really been tried.

 

The stock market cheerleaders/Fed rate cut cheerleaders at CNBC, but I repeat myself, lied by omission about wholesale price increases yesterday, but CNN told the truth

 CNBC: Wholesale prices rose 0.2% in October, in line with expectations

Wholesale prices nudged higher in October, though largely in line with expectations and mostly consistent with the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates again in December, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday.

The producer price index, which measures what producers get for their products, increased a seasonally adjusted 0.2% for the month, up one-tenth of a percentage point from September though matching the Dow Jones consensus forecast. On a 12-month basis, headline wholesale inflation was at 2.4%.

Excluding food and energy, core PPI rose 0.3%, also one-tenth more than September and also matching expectations. The 12-month rate was at 3.1%.

"Largely in line" and "mostly consistent" lol. Both 12-month measures were higher than the consensus expected, which was 2.3% for headline and 3% for core. The year over year measures are the most important anyway, especially core.

Why lie about it?

 

 

CNN: Wholesale inflation heated up again last month, reversing recent progress

US wholesale inflation picked up more than expected in October, indicating that some price pressures persist at the producer level.

The Producer Price Index, a measurement of average price changes seen by producers and manufacturers, rose 0.2% on a monthly basis and 2.4% for the 12 months ended in October, marking an acceleration from September, when prices ticked up 0.1% for the month and grew 1.9% annually, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Thursday. ...

FactSet consensus forecasts called for a 0.2% monthly gain and for the annual rate to heat up to 2.3%.

Excluding food and energy prices, which tend to be volatile, core PPI rose 0.3% on a monthly basis, marking an acceleration from 0.2% in September. Annually, core PPI heated up from 2.9% to 3.1%, the largest increase since June. Economists projected a 0.2% monthly gain and a 3% annual rate. 

Obviously not all prediction models were the same. FactSet projected a 0.2% monthly gain for core vs. 0.3% for core shown above by FXStreet.

But again, the year over year is up MORE THAN EXPECTED for BOTH measures in most models. CNN mentions it, CNBC does not.

You can clearly observe that overall, headline wholesale prices year over year have been trending higher since June 2023. That bottom came out in July 2023, when the Fed last hiked the interest rate in the current cycle and then paused for good.

That was a big mistake.

The rise in wholesale prices since then is as good an indicator as any that higher inflation is deeply embedded in the economy and that the Fed stopped hiking too soon. Arguably core prices sent the same signal, but not starting until after December 2023.

Paying attention to core could explain the Fed's mistake, but for the fact that if the Fed were truly listening to this information, it wouldn't have then cut by 50 basis points in September 2024. I mean, c'mon man.

Jay Powell represents the interests of the bankers and Wall Street, for whom inflation is a good thing because it is the screen behind which the pipeline from prices to profits gets juiced.

He does not represent the people.

Who appointed that guy anyway?!

 

   

 

CNBC fact-checks Joe Biden, now that it doesn't matter

 But the article name-checks Donald Trump five times because he's an opponent of Fed decisions.

There's a whole movement out there that wants to End the Fed, composed of Republicans, Democrats, and libertarians, which CNBC is loathe to mention.

Many of them argue that the US 2-year Treasury Note should be the benchmark for the Federal Funds Effective Rate, not the whim of the Fed Chair and the Federal Open Market Committee, who are un-elected, well-connected, and VERY WELL PAID elites who watch out primarily for the interests of the banksters.

For example, despite the disastrous Zero Interest Rate Policy post-Great Recession, DGS2 resisted it and outran DFF throughout the period under Obama and Trump, and anticipated the recent inflationary outburst by starting to rise in the spring of 2021, a full year before the Fed moved to "combat inflation" by raising the funds rate in the spring of 2022. 

Similarly DGS2 also started to fall in November of 2023 despite no change to Fed policy, anticipating the recent decline of inflation rates by almost a year.

The role of the US Treasury Secretary, AS MUCH A CREATURE of the Executive as the Fed Chair, is also huge for interest rates because the Secretary decides how to divvy up the debt securities for auction by duration.

Biden's Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has been in the news for driving up the issuance in T-bills to 22% when 15% has been customary, which has contributed to longer rates falling and stocks rising, just in time for the election.

But the costs of this have been dramatic, financing deficit spending at the highest rates and driving interest payments on the debt to the third spot in the budget, behind only Social Security and Medicare.

Big-spending inflation-stimulating Democrat Senators Warren, Whitehouse, and Hickenlooper interfere with the independence of Fed Chair Powell, pressure him to cut interest rates by 75 basis points

 Their letter is here.

 

Foreign born employment in the US has grown by just 2.4 million on average from 2019 to 2023, and we're supposed to believe with Jay Powell that 10 million illegals flooding into the country are working

 Who appointed this joker anyhow?

Fed Chair Jerome Powell Comedy Hour: All those hordes of illegals coming across the border the last two years have been filling the jobs employers couldn't fill, making the economy grow 3%

 The laughs are here:

Fed Chair Jerome Powell: Immigration The Reason Why The Economy Grew 3% In A Year, "We've Needed More People":

Our economy has been short labor and probably still is if you talk to and we do talk to a lot of business people, it is still difficult to hire for many, many companies. So we've needed more people. But what happened over the course of last year is to a much greater extent than had been thought. Immigration moved up quite a bit over the last two years.     

 Meanwhile, full time as a percentage of civilian population DROPPED year over year in the first quarter, according to the employment numbers out today, from 49.7% in 1Q2023 to 49.2% in 1Q2024.

Just a reminder that the Fed said all these purchases it made in 2008 and again in 2020 were just temporary

Now Fed Chair Powell has just said it's time for the pace of the roll-off to slow.

That's the curved line slowly trending down from it's peak near $9 trillion to $7.5 trillion now.

Just as the National Debt will never be paid down, the Fed will never stop intervening in the Treasury market to limit supply and support prices, which suppresses market driven interest rates. 

Powell isn't serious about fighting inflation.

 

 

Jerome "Arthur Burns" Powell ignites gold fever

The London PM gold fix soared 437% between 1970 and 1978 using average prices.

Gold is up about 60% since Powell became Fed Chair in February 2018. Gold has risen from about $1333 to $2142 on an average basis.

Gold hits fifth record high in March on Fed rate-cut view :

Gold prices on Thursday hit record highs for the fifth time this month after the U.S. Federal Reserve signaled it would press ahead with three rate cuts in 2024 despite elevated inflation.

Spot gold was up 1.1% at $2,209.65 per ounce at after hitting an all-time high of $2,222.39 earlier in the session. U.S. gold futures soared 2.4% to $2,212.40. ...

Despite recent high inflation readings, Fed chair Jerome Powell said the U.S. central bank is still likely to reduce interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point by the end of 2024, but that it also depends on further economic data. ...

Lower interest rates decrease the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding bullion . . ..

 

Core pce inflation is out and shows itself running ahead of the 10-year US Treasury yield for four consecutive years 2020-2023, which is unprecedented

Jerome Powell is the biggest phony inflation fighter the country has ever seen.

He was appointed by Trump! So much winning!

Core pce inflation previously exceeded the ten year yield in 1974-75 and in 2012 (barely).

The Fed's primary inflation-fighting tool has been the Federal Funds Rate, but it let inflation run wildly out of control before even lifting a finger to stop it in March 2022 when the Fed finally acted and started raising the rate.

It is a shameful episode which has benefited businesses which hiked prices higher than inflation to goose profits, and the federal government which desperately needed to devalue its mounting debts, all at the expense of the average American.

The lack of outrage over this is a study in the depth of American servitude. Slavery didn't end in 1865 for African Americans. It became the common lot of us all.

 

 

Jay Powell's inflation has been bery bery good for corporate profits and a federal government drunk on debt

 

Jay Powell's wimpy response to inflation let core CPI inflation run ahead of the US 10-year for an unprecedented five consecutive years 2019-2023 on an average annual basis

 Jay Powell is much worse than Burns.

Jay is the money men's best friend ever.

 

3Q2023 core inflation at 2% vindicates Powell's March 2021 prediction that inflation would be transitory