President Donald Trump asked a group of House Republicans during a meeting if he should give Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell the boot from his position. You can probably guess what they said. It was a big, fat “yes, please.” However, the president made it clear he’s not going to make that move right now.
“I talked about the concept of firing him and I said, ‘what do you think’? Almost every one of them said I should,” Trump went on to tell reporters in the Oval Office. “But, I’m more conservative than they are.”
President Trump has made a series of threats to hand Powell his pink slip in recent weeks. Powell was appointed to his current position back in 2017, during the first Trump administration. The reason he might be sent to the unemployment line? Refusal to cut interest rates according to Trump’s demands.
On Wednesday, Trump said that the Fed chairman “should have cut interest rates a long time ago.”
“I think he does a terrible job. He’s costing us a lot of money, and we fight through it. It’s almost – the country has become so successful that it doesn’t have a big impact, but it does hurt people wanting to get a mortgage. People want to buy a house. He’s a terrible, he’s a terrible fed chair,” the president explained. Oh, he added that Powell is doing a “lousy job.”
“We want to see lower interest rates. Our country deserves it. We’re making a lot of money. We’re doing great as a country. We have no inflation. Record stock market, record business, record everything. Everything’s a record now,” Trump continued, according to Fox Business.
“I was surprised he was appointed. I was surprised, frankly, that, Biden put him in and extended him,” Trump said to reporters. “So no, we’re not planning on doing anything. We are very concerned.”
A few days prior to his meeting with House Republicans, Trump stated that if Powell were to decide to resign from his position it would be “a great thing” for the nation, saying, “he’s very bad for the country.”
You know…I get the feeling that Trump might not be very fond of Powell. Then again, I could just be reading into things.
The president said Sunday that Powell is spending $2.5 billion to rebuild the Federal Reserve building yet does not look like the kind of guy who wants to spend $2.5 billion. When asked Wednesday if he is ruling out the idea of firing Powell, Trump said “I don’t rule out anything, but I think it’s highly unlikely unless he has to leave for fraud. I mean, it’s possible there’s fraud involved with the $2.5, $2.7 billion renovation. This is a renovation. How do you spend $2.7 billion?”
It certainly seems to me and probably you as well, that the president is continuing to apply a ton of pressure on Powell to force him into resigning so he doesn’t have to fire him. That’s my theory anyway. However, if the Fed chairman doesn’t leave voluntarily, I think he’ll be kicked to the curb.
"*" indicates required fields