Is He Crazy Enough To Do This? -- Digby

[erronis]

https://digbysblog.net/2025/04/17/is-he-crazy-enough-to-do-this/

BREAKING: Trump says that "If I ask him [Fed Chair Powell], he'll be out of there. I don't think he's doing the job. He's always too late..I'm not happy with him... If I want him out, he'll be out of there real fast, believe me."

FACT: The President has zero authority to fire the Fed Chair as Powell’s term is fixed, and he’s already made clear he won’t resign on command.

If Trump somehow tried to remove him illegally, it would rip the rug out from under Wall Street, and markets would crater.

Certainly. Will he? Who knows? But I think Elizabeth Warren is right about this:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., warned Thursday that U.S. markets will “crash” if President Donald Trump has the power to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.The comment from Warren, a frequent Powell critic, on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” came hours after Trump wrote in a social media post that the Fed chair’s “termination cannot come fast enough!”

A senior White House official later told CNBC that Trump’s broadside should not be seen as a threat to fire Powell, and that there are no plans being made to end his term early.Powell has previously said the president does not have the power to fire him.

“I have tangled with [Powell] on a regular basis about both regulations and interest rates,” Warren acknowledged in her remarks at the New York Stock Exchange.“But understand this: If Chairman Powell can be fired by the president of the United States, it will crash markets in the United States,” she said.

Warren, the ranking member on the Senate Banking Committee, said the “infrastructure” upholding the stock market — and therefore the global economy — is “the idea that the big pieces move independent of the politics.”

He was pissed at being asked about that so I would guess that they’ve been pressuring him hard no to do it, at least right now. The markets are very volatile right now and they have not even come close to recovering from the huge drops around the tariffs. But he seems to be making a lot of decisions impulsively these days so it could happen.

[Deuxcents]

1. He does whatever he wants and leaves the mess for the courts to deal with.

[babylonsister]

2. My IRA says yes. nt

[617Blue]

3. Sounded like a threat to me. Get rid of Powell and I'll be a market bloodbath