Howard Schneider

this is how the president is going to treat other governors, other Fed chairs, you know, with the threat of the criminal justice system kind of intervening at any point if they don't like the outcomes they're getting.

That's a pretty compelling situation to say you're going to retire as much as you might want to at age 72 and pursue your post-retirement passions, be with your family, plenty of options, right?

Or do you stay in that governor's job and fight?

And the thing is, right now, that board's pretty split.

And Powell has never said publicly what he's going to do.

When he's asked about it, he says, I'm worried about my job as chair and serving that term out and not tipping his hand at all.

People buy food and energy and those prices went up a bit smartly.

The food inflation was the biggest in a few years.

So that's not great news for consumers or for the Trump administration heading into midterm election year.

But the tariff pass through seems to be kind of crawling to an end.

So you should get some disinflation and should pave the way for, you know, one, two, some are even saying three rate cuts this year.

Here's the issue.

It's really going to take until April before the data is clear of the noise from the shutdown.

So even though this is a pretty Fed positive report, it's not going to change the outcome for January, which seems pretty baked in in a pause.

No reason to make a call on rates yet.

He is saying flat out that he regards this as an effort by the administration to use the Justice Department, to use the threat of a criminal indictment, to put pressure on him because he's not doing what the president wants on interest rates, which is a pretty remarkable kind of outing of Powell's view in his heart of hearts about this whole thing.

That hasn't happened yet.

He's been very kind of distanced himself from it and tried to not kind of take the bait, if you will, and get into a shouting match with the president of the United States.

But I guess the arrival of grand jury subpoenas and the threat of a criminal indictment has made him speak out.

Tillis has said in a very quick statement, it's not Powell's judgment that should be in question here.