Bloomberg News reports that President Joe Biden will be using his meeting with the Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell to emphasize that he is giving adequate “space to operate” to the central bank independently to attend to the crisis due to inflation, as per the White House economic adviser Brian Deese.
What’s more?
While talking to Bloomberg Television on Tuesday, Deese said that the president is underscoring something vital. The respect for the Fed’s independence cannot be taken for granted, said Deese, and it is something that the earlier presidents have not done.
The White House has increasingly tried to shift the responsibility to the Federal Reserve for the inflation in its public comments, as the polls indicate escalating prices is the primary concern among the voters just before the midterm elections in November. In op-ed publishing on Monday in Wall Street Journal, Biden stated that the Fed’s primary responsibility is tame inflation.
Biden said that his predecessors had demeaned the Fed, and the past presidents have tried to influence the decision of the Fed inappropriately during periods of elevated inflation. But he will not do the same, Biden wrote.
Former President Donald Trump criticized the central bank regularly, stating that it should have been more aggressive in its approach to slashing the interest rates. At one point, he even said that he was thinking of demoting Powell. In his autobiography, former Federal Reserve Chair Paul Volcker said that he was invited to the White House to meet President Ronald Reagan. His aides said that he had asked the Fed not to increase the interest rates just before the elections.
Bloomberg News reports that Deese defended the meeting of Tuesday, which also included the former Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen and Treasury Secretary, as “not a photo op” and revealed that it was standard practice for the chairs of the Federal Reserve and the presidents to meet to share views on the economy from time to time. This meeting also proves to the Americans that Biden is concerned and focused on the matter of inflation, stated Deese.
