President Donald Trump is trying to bully Fed Chair Jerome Powell into drastically lowering interest rates, which is not on the Fed’s agenda for now. On July 23, Trump insisted that rates should be dropped from 4.5% today to about 1%. Under the current monetarist policies dominating the entire trans-Atlantic financial system, this would only feed that much more funny-money into the bloated speculative bubble.
On July 24, Trump personally visited the Fed’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. to check on the progress of the $2.5 billion refurbishment of the headquarters. While touring the construction site with Powell, Trump tried to sandbag the Fed chief by announcing to the press that the project had a major cost overrun and was now costing $3.1 billion. Powell interrupted the President more than once, disagreed, and said Trump was adding in the cost of repairs to the nearby Martin building, which was completed five years ago.
