Courtesy of Pam Martens
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell
On April 5 of this year, Axios ran this headline: “Poll indicates low trust, poor public perception of the Fed.” Axios had commissioned an Ipsos poll which found that 53 percent of Americans didn’t trust the U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve. An earlier Axios/Ipsos poll released on February 23 had found that a stunning 60 percent of Americans didn’t trust the Fed.
Both of those polls were taken before the trading scandal at the Fed further damaged its credibility.
Those poll numbers likely explain why Fed Chairman Jerome Powell uses every press conference he conducts as an opportunity to state that the Fed’s priority is to work for the American people. Unfortunately, the facts keep getting in the way of that statement.
Powell held another of his press conferences yesterday and did more harm to the Fed’s credibility by making statements that simply don’t correlate to the facts on the ground. The question came from Politico’s Victoria Guida. The exchange went as follows:
Guida: “Hi Chair Powell. So the Fed recently announced that there’s going to be new conflict of interest rules for investments by Fed officials. And this follows, obviously, the resignation of two regional Fed presidents. And I’m just wondering, do you think that there’s more that you will need to do to rebuild the credibility of the Fed, such as requiring officials to put their assets in blind trusts? And, also, if you could speak to whether you have any concerns that any rules or laws were broken by Fed officials. Thank you.”
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