New Politico Op Ed on Trump's Attempted Firing of Fed Governor Lisa Cook

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Hello readers, an hour ago I had an Op Ed published in Politico about the Federal Reserve. For those that didn’t hear, late last night Trump declared that he fired Lisa Cook over the “mortgage fraud” allegations I mentioned last Friday. Apparently I had my finger on the pulse of events. 

My Op Ed develops the ideas I’ve been developing the past six months regarding exchange traded markets as “conventional wisdom processors” rather than “information processors” as a certain influential school of thought has claimed with increasing success over the past half century.

I didn’t get to focus on Governor Lisa Cook but I do want to say a little bit about this. Lisa Cook is the first Black woman ever appointed to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. She is only the fourth Black person ever to be appointed. Trump certainly has a disdain for Federal Reserve independence. However, he also has been purging Black people from government and it would be a mistake to think racism does not play a major role in how Lisa Cook has been targeted. I know for many readers this is a boring, uninteresting or even “ideological” point. In my view it is a fact and I think it is long past time to push through the discomfort or disdain that many people have about talking about racism and race in everyday politics. At the most basic level, you will not understand what’s going on without it. The attack on “DEI” is part of the restructuring of our government around Trump’s personal agenda.

Lisa Cook deserves better and it will be shameful at many different levels if Chairman Powell does not come out swinging in defense of her. Onto the Op Ed.

Why Markets Aren’t Freaking Out Over Trump’s Attack on the Fed And why that’s a big mistake.

President Donald Trump’s campaign to dominate the Federal Reserve reached new heights with his effort to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook — and Wall Street responded with a yawn. The tepid reaction from markets is perhaps shocking, but it’s not surprising.

The second Trump administration has been consumed by two central themes. The first theme is the unprecedented pace at which this administration has attacked the rule of law and the constitutional system on which it is built. The second theme is the unprecedented weakness of the response from major institutions to the Trump administration’s actions. Wall Street’s passivity amid Trump’s unprecedented attack on the Fed is only the latest example.

To economists, the independence of the Federal Reserve is particularly sacrosanct. They think absolute independence from the president and Congress is the best result for the economy in the long term. Trump, on the other hand, views an independent Fed as his enemy; for months, he’s been browbeating Fed Chair Jerome Powell to cut interest rates in order to boost the economy, despite Powell’s public views that so far, the time hasn’t been right. Trump sees the world as a real estate developer first, and to real estate developers, lower interest rates are like manna from heaven.

Throughout Trump’s campaign targeting the Fed, investors have remained remarkably calm, even now. The stock market dipped briefly when Trump threatened to fire Powell himself — another legally dubious move — but it quickly recovered. Why?

Read the rest here