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Statement from Jerome Powell

federalreserve.gov

411–420 of 871 posts

Re: Statement from Jerome Powell

#411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One day, maybe we will rebuild from scratch The current situation is bad, but this is just doomerism. The current administration will end. Trump can't live forever. His approval rating is already low and falling. We're in for a bumpy ride, but then it's going to start reverting toward the mean. Not necessarily back to the way things were, but periods of extreme like this are followed by a reversion to the mean more…

Trump is not the problem, he’s a symptom. The problem is the roughly one third of Americans who think he’s great, and to a lesser extent the roughly one third who don’t care. After all that’s happened, his approval rating is still above 40%. Those people aren’t going away or changing their minds any time soon.

That is the truly scary thing.

And from what I've seen, the rest of 'the west' has similarly sized undercurrents of similar sentiment.

Strangely, that 40% will be made up of, largely, people whose grandparents lived through WWII.

Re: Statement from Jerome Powell

#412

I’m a little shocked to see the quality of some comments here - I would expect a more grounded discussion. This is like Reddit / YouTube comment history. Someone please tell me this is a Wendy’s. Sure the Fed isn’t perfect. But we don’t really have a better solution as of now because our financial systems are extremely powerful and anyone in office would love to abuse it if they can. Sure, the renovations are ridicul…

HN has better baseline conversation, but Social Media is inane by its very nature.

There's also little genuine conversation to be had. The situation is bad, has been bad, and seems to only be getting worse. That's the only interpretation any rational person can hold. And, when everyone has the same opinion and that opinion is drastic, that creates a circle jerk.

Re: Statement from Jerome Powell

#414
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was rewarded with full control of every branch of government. What did we expect?

Through what mechanism is he controlling the other branches of government?

The execution of the Unitary Executive theory, a clear ideological descendant of Carl Schmitt’s Decisionism. Carl also had some beautiful prose describing the weaknesses of liberal democracy and how to exploit them that are very relevant to today as well.

Re: Statement from Jerome Powell

#415

Remember early in his first term when he tested waters but the governmental system pushed back and kept him in check? It feels like an out of body experience to look at this and contemplate how much he’s changed about how the U.S. government conducts itself.

Trump #1 came unprepared, that hasn't repeated.

I think it’s more like the opportunists weren’t prepared. Now they’re feasting, and Trump is easily exploited.

Re: Statement from Jerome Powell

#416

Shots fired. Even the republicans will not be able to ignore this and they know that if Powell caves in the American economy will likely collapse. So who will speak up in his defense?

> Even the republicans will not be able to ignore this

Oh boy would I love to join you in whatever alternate dimension you live in.

Re: Statement from Jerome Powell

#417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have bad things to say about him. But they're firmly on pause. What Trump wants for the Federal Reserve is far worse. And anyone who is a hard-currency quantity-theory-of-money conservative, should also be appalled by it. Trump is way worse than what the harshest critics of the Federal Reserve think about it. Nobody right or left should support it. Only the billionaires will profit off the monetary disorder.

> Only the billionaires will profit off the monetary disorder. Maybe not even them. Certainly not all of them.

By design, kiss the ring. It’s a natural progression of the kind of grifting that has been occurring through 2025: shitcoin rugpulls, tariff announcements, etc.

Re: Statement from Jerome Powell

#418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of us are really, really hoping that there is something unique about Trump that cannot be easily reproduced by the next MAGA leader. That the movement will fragment into irrelevancy as the usual elites regain control.

This is what Wolff, who has written 3-4 biographical books on Trump, thinks: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Wolff_(journalist) He used the term suis generic in a (PBS?) interview to describe Trump: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sui_generis

It may be that I'm a naive optimist, but I agree with him. When I look at who the hard core believers envision as the next torch-bearer, none of them have what it takes. Not Vance, not Rubio (Rubio! Suddenly he is 'strong'?? When was that ever a widely held opinion??), not the Trump kids. Trump has a way of defying political gravity and repeatedly escaping the consequences that take down every other politician. In this case the liberal consensus that it's a cult may not be that far from the truth -- maybe that's a loaded term, but how else do you describe a group of supporters whose faith is so strong that their ideology changes by the day to match whatever their leader currently says, even if it is diametrically opposed to what they said last week?

Re: Statement from Jerome Powell

#419

The US drift into Adam Curtis' broad thesis in hypernormalisation(a) continues apace I see. Great to see J Pow putting up a fight but I fear this is all going one way. (a) >We live in a world where the powerful deceive us. We know they lie. They know we know they lie. They don't care. We say we care but do nothing.

When I first watched a bunch of Adam Curtis stuff I thought it a long winded way of stating bad things have happened and have resulted in these bigger, overarching, bad things.

Thinking about it now 10 years later it feels alot different. The pervasiveness of tolerance of lies and fakeness has gone so far past anything I could have imagined being a big contributor to that.

Re: Statement from Jerome Powell

#420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably going to collapse anyway. He's been hitting all of the pillars of the economy with a sledge hammer.

I wonder how the stock market would look if AI wasn't such a big driving factor. Or how it would look if there was no sledge hammer. Insane times.

My working theory is that the ai bubble is caused by trump. People are too uncertain to want to invest in most industries, but they have to put their money somewhere, so they put it in ai stocks. Since the supreme court is likely to rule trump's tariffs illegal in a week or so, this may lead to a stock market crash. As people reallocate their portfolios, they will sell their ai stocks, which will pop the bubble and cause a crash. Something to watch out for.
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