Ep. 474: Jerome Powell Needs To Be Dr. No, Not Dr. Yes

Fed Chair Jerome Powell needs to channel Dr. No from the James Bond series. Powell needs to say “no” more often in order to help maintain the United States’ fiscal solvency (the U.S. of course is insolvent). Banks, CRE owners, PE firms, institutional and retail investors and of course the political class will all soon be clamoring for Powell to ease monetary policy. Too often Powell has caved and said “Yes” to ultra easy monetary policy – from ultra-low interest rates to growing the money supply as measured by M1 by 419% from February 2020 to March 2022. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will be in Powell’s ear on behalf of Congress and President Biden. The pressure on Powell to ease policy will be intense this election year. Biden would like to see lower rates to help spur the economy while Yellen would like to see lower rates to help ease the Treasury debt burden. In addition, I believe the Biden Administration will try to push through stimulus checks for a third time (stimulus 3.0: once under Trump, 2x under Biden) to buy votes ahead of the November election. My sense is that many Americans have not yet made the connection between money printing/stimulus checks and price inflation, and therefore would welcome stimulus checks, which of course is the last thing the United States needs. I am not confident the GOP would push back on a stimulus bill. Rather than have an adult conversation with Americans as to why stimulus checks are a poor idea (printed money creates price inflation and further increases the debt load), the liberal GOP may wrongheadedly reason that it would be a bad idea to fight a stimulus bill in an election year for fear of being viewed as non-compassionate by voters. This would be ironic since fiscal austerity is the compassionate course of action given the United States’ current fiscal predicament.