The media are running endless articles about the dangers of Trump firing a Federal Reserve governor, who certainly appears to have committed mortgage fraud, citing a loss of “Fed independence.
It is amazing how ignorant and biased these “news” outlets really are.
Here, the AP is very concerned about all the wrong things:
How the Fed losing its independence could affect Americans’ everyday lives
President Donald Trump’s attempt to fire a member of the Federal Reserve’s governing board has raised alarms among economists and legal experts who see it as the biggest threat to the central bank’s independence in decades.
The consequences could impact most Americans’ everyday lives: Economists worry that if Trump gets what he wants — a loyal Fed that sharply cuts short-term interest rates — the result would likely be higher inflation and, over time, higher borrowing costs for things like mortgages, car loans and business loans.
Apparently, the AP thinks that people who allegedly cheat and game the system should be allowed to direct financial policy for the rest of us. And, in their minds, if Trump convinces the Fed to lower interest rates, it might cause housing prices to become unaffordable in the future.
Now, I don’t recall the AP, or most of the media, being concerned at all about Biden’s policies, which absolutely caused home ownership to become a pipe dream for most people. As you can see from the chart below, using numbers from the Fed, those problems really magnified during the Biden years:
These so-called journalists, and the supposedly independent Federal Reserve, watched the price of everything skyrocket (including houses) after Biden took office, yet I don’t recall hearing them complain about how his policies caused inflation.
Here is a brief history of the economy in the last year of Trump, and the disaster of the Biden years, which the media has hidden from the public.
The recession that was caused by government diktats during COVID was the shortest ever, and in the last nine months of Trump’s term, 12.6 million jobs were recovered, or an average rate of 1.4 million jobs per month.
Despite the fastest recovery on record, the talking points from the media and other Democrats have been that Biden inherited an economic disaster and his policies saved America. That has been a blatant and obvious lie, and it continues to this day. And, the recovery under Trump would have been even faster if Democrats governors wouldn’t have kept businesses and schools closed as they sought to sabotage Trump.
Despite the supply problems caused during COVID, and soaring job growth obviously causing an increase in demand, Trump handed off inflation at an exceptionally low 1.4% year-over-year to Biden in January 2020. Trump also handed off a fairly secure border and a world where Iran and Russia were under control because of sanctions and low oil prices.
Biden did many things to cause inflation to soar, lying about how he had to fix Trump’s disastrous policies.
As far as I can tell, the “independent” Federal Reserve didn’t say a word about these policies that obviously caused inflationary troubles.
Energy prices affect everything, and crude oil is used in over 6,000 products, so analyzing the price of crude oil is a good proxy for seeing why inflation got so high during the Biden years.
Here is a five year chart on crude oil prices, which I will break down below:
By five months into Biden’s term in June 2021, inflation for the 12 -month period had soared to 5.4%—and remember, the first seven months were included in the 1.4% inflation that Trump had handed off.
Crude oil on the day Biden “won” was around $40 per barrel. By June 20, 2021 it was $74, or up over 80%.
The “independent” Fed wasn’t worried despite inflation hitting the highest since 1991. They left rates around zero.
In January 2022, inflation hit 7.5%, up over 6% in one year. That was the highest in 40-years. Crude oil hit around $87, or up over 110% since Biden took office, and Russia still hadn’t invaded Ukraine. And the “independent” Fed still didn’t raise rates.
In March 2022, the Fed finally raised rates when inflation hit 8.5%, the highest since 1981. I guess the increase was no longer transitory. Crude oil hit $114, which was up 185% since the November election.
And not once did I see the media or the Fed properly blame Biden’s policies for the destruction they caused. They falsely blamed COVID for supply chain problems—if that were true then how come inflation didn’t spike while Trump was still in office?—they blamed consumers for spending too much, and of course they blamed Russia. Russia is always a fallback.
They also didn’t blame the fact that the federal budget soared by over 50% since 2019 while inflation was up less than a little over 20%. Biden handed off a budget of around $7 trillion, and a deficit around $2 trillion, in what the media and other Democrats described as a “great” economy as they campaigned for Biden and then Harris. The Fed has also been losing money since 2022, costing taxpayers billions of dollars. It is time to lower rates. It is a shame that the media is campaigning to keep rates high and housing unaffordable, all because they want to destroy Trump.
Trump is doing several things as he seeks to lower inflation and to fix what Biden destroyed.
But the “independent” Fed is not saying anything about any of those things. It is still on a snipe hunt for inflation caused by tariffs.
The Fed is as independent as Merrick Garland, James Clapper, John Brennan, James Comey, and most of the media. They have all been attacking Trump and Republicans for ten years while campaigning for Democrats. Facts don’t matter.
Image from Grok.