Carla Javier

And if these data delays and disruptions become the new normal, he says that can make the picture of the labor market even fuzzier and harder to react to.

I'm Carla Javier from Marketplace.

But first, I'll review recent economic developments in the outlook.

Yeah, I mean, there's a boring legal answer, which is the president picks somebody as a nominee, and the Senate vets that person through advice and consent to confirm the nominee.

And after the confirmation, then bada-bing, bada-boom, we have a Fed chair.

More interesting answer is a little bit like a selection of a pope.

We've got the president and his advisers,

gathering, mostly in quiet.

And, you know, the rest of us on the outside, we parse some tea leaves and look for the white smoke until the nominee is announced.

There's been really this increasing movement of the Fed into the public eye, both because of the economic turmoil we've gone through and because of the way that politics in general has become more and more of sort of a spectacle and even a zone of entertainment for many.

A kind of celebrity apprentice sweepstakes.

But there's no doubt that the process is one that invites a lot of active speculation watching just because the Fed chair is the dominant economic policymaker in the United States.

Arthur Burns was someone who had known President Richard Nixon through various phases of his career.

which had the unfortunate effect of really helping inflation become more entrenched in the economy and more sustained.

Another example of this was the one that it was the dog that didn't bark.

George H.W.

It's a dog that didn't bark, though, because who did he nominate when he had his one choice as Fed chair?

He re-nominated Alan Greenspan, the person that he seemed to be, you know, most skeptical of.

I think it's different in that the pressure campaign is very public.

So we've never seen anything like what Donald Trump has done in the previous year to the Federal Reserve, which is an out and out assault on its independence.