Nick Timiraos

Monday morning and I'm reading Congressional Research Service papers on, well, what happens when there's a vacancy?

And here's the answer.

You know, there have been two times...

in the modern fed where the new fed chair wasn't confirmed when the old chairs term expired and what happened in those two scenarios in 1948 and 1978 the outgoing chair stayed in the job and served his chair for a couple of months a couple of weeks but we we don't know here this is uncharted waters

If you're picked to be the Fed chair, are you willing to face the same intimidation that the current Fed chair is facing, and how will you react to it?

That wasn't a question that you would have expected

to have been asked before this, would you fight a criminal investigation?

How far are you willing to go?

Will you conduct yourself the way Powell has?

That's now gonna be a focus, very likely, of the next confirmation hearing.

Yeah, I think you're looking at more than just the loss of Fed independence.

What you're looking at is the White House claiming control of monetary policy.

When people talk about Fed independence, well, what Fed independence?

It's not in the Constitution.

There's no Fed should be a fourth branch of government.

What people are talking about is the existing branches of government agreeing to this relationship that we should not have direct political control over monetary policy because the long run interest of the economy and the short run interest of politicians don't always sync up.

And so what's at stake here isn't just the end of kind of this generic Fed independence.

What's at stake is, can this president have much greater control over monetary policy?

The big question really for this meeting is, where does it leave everybody on the rate setting committee in thinking about another interest rate cut in December?

Because if we go back to their previous meeting in September,