Friday, January 4, 2019

Fed Chairman Powell Says He Wouldn’t Resign at Trump’s Request

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said he wouldn’t resign if President Donald Trump asked him to do so.

He made the comment during a panel discussion at the American Economic Association annual meeting being held in Atlanta.

The panel also included former chairs Janet Yellen and Ben Bernanke.

In today's EPJ Daily Alert, I wrote:

[I]t should be noted that markets are paying very close attention to Powell comments. How close? So much so that the AEA website that was live broadcasting the panel discussion at the annual meeting of the AEA crashed. 
Fortunately, CNBC also broadcast it live and I was able to catch it there.
Powell's comments seemed to soothe the markets and were somewhat positive compared to his performance at the press conference he held following the December rate hike. 
It appears he is learning Fedspeak. He had a lot of "on the one hand we might do this, on the other we might do that" in his comments.
Fortunately for us, we don't really have to try and interpret what Powell is saying other than how markets react for short-term trading reasons because the money growth data is the key and the Fed provides us that data every Thursday at 2:00 PM ET like clockwork.
When asked at the conference about a possible meeting with Trump at the White House, he displayed his advanced grasp of Fedspeak:
Meetings between presidents and Fed chairs do happen. Nothing has been scheduled, and I don’t really have anything to report on that.
-RW 


1 comment:

  1. What money growth data the Fed provides at 2pm are you referring to? Is there a chart on their website sor something? Do you have a link to a source. I would like to take a look at it.

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