Neil Irwin

This is not some complete crank.

At the same time, he is somebody who has become very political and has really made it his centerpiece of his job in the last 10 months to be somebody who's out there speaking on behalf of, defending, arguing on behalf of the president.

in a way that he is more politically intertwined with the president than we've seen in recent Fed chair appointments.

So the real question is, you know, the Fed is set up to have all these levels of independence.

So the governors are appointed for 14-year terms.

They cut across presidential administrations.

The Reserve Bank presidents around the country have their own weird selection process through which they're selected.

So it's meant to be insulated from day-to-day politics.

The question is, would Kevin Hassett or whoever ends up being the next Fed chair be more directly responsive to what the White House wants, what the president wants, than has been the modern norm?

And where that rubber hits the road is, let's say we have an inflation problem a year or two from now.

Does Fed Chair Hassett or whoever ends up in that job, are they willing to do what it takes to raise interest rates to try and bring inflation down the way the Fed did in 2022, the way the Fed did in the early 1980s?

And that's something that no president wants to see.

They don't want to see higher interest rates.

They don't want to see the economy kind of choked off by the Fed.

At the same time, the reason the Fed has this independence is so that they will be willing to do that, to do whatever it takes to keep inflation in check.

Will a

Chair Hassett or whoever it ends up being be willing to do that.

Money.