Lev Menand

speaker

1,295 appearances 6 recordings 1 series first heard Jan 2025 last heard 17 Jul

Lev Menand’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Odd Lots · The Fight Over Fed Independence Just Got Taken To a Whole New Level · 12 Jan 2026 podcast

As Joe mentioned earlier, Powell is also serving a term as governor.

That term runs until twenty twenty eight.

And if Powell were to choose to stay on the board not to resign as governor when his chair term expires, that would take a seat that Trump would otherwise be able to nominate someone to fill.

And that is relevant because the board at the beginning of Trump's term had seven governors on it.

And so it was full.

And those governors have 14-year terms that are staggered every two years, designed to prevent a president from being able to quickly take control of the board with their own appointees, right?

It it insulates the board from the White House to have 14-year term governors, seven of them who uh are only turnover every two years.

But if a lot of those governors can't

Can be induced to resign early, then the president can put his or her own people in.

And so one thing that could be going on here is an effort to get Powell to step down from his governor seat.

Famously, Mariner Eccles, who was the chair of the board in the 30s and 40s, when he was no longer chair, he stayed.

In his governor's seat.

And uh that is unusual, but can happen when the stakes for who's in those seats are high, like they are now.

But I also think it's worth recognizing that there's something going on that's um um um bigger than the Fed here.

Um, that it isn't just sort of this micro politics of, you know, Jerome Powell's seat as chair, Jerome.

Powell's seat as governor, that's about Jerome Powell as a high-profile, prominent government official who has not bent the knee, um, being made an example of so that everybody else on the board of governors and throughout the U.S.

government can see um what could happen to you if you

You uh defy the administration.

And that's why I feel the stakes for this are actually quite high.

And it's about the larger dynamic of what happens in a government where people are scared of the White House.

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