Bloomberg News/Landov
President Donald Trump, left, with Fed Chairman Jerome Powell
President Donald Trump remains livid with the Federal Reserve and its leader Jerome Powell despite the dovish policy in 2019, according to several reports.
The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday night that Trump recounted a phone call with Powell where the president told the Fed chairman “I guess I’m stuck with you.”
That call took place on March 8 after the surprisingly soft February employment data was released, the report said.
Trump says he remains angry about the Fed hiking interest rates too much last year.
Axios reported Wednesday that Trump has mused whether he could replace Powell with former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh.
Warsh was interviewed by the president for the top Fed job but Trump decided to go with Powell.
Trump announced last month that he would nominated Stephen Moore, a former op-ed writer with the Wall Street Journal, to a seat on the Fed. Moore had called on the president to fire Powell.
Top White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said that the president wants to central bank to swiftly reverse the last two quarter-point rate hikes engineered by the Fed in September and December. Moore also said he favored this policy shift.
But that’s something that Fed officials don’t favor.
The Fed did engineer a big policy shift this year. Facing turmoil in financial markets and a weak global outlook, the Fed said shifted from steady pace of quarter-point rate hikes to a “patient” policy. With this move to the sidelines, Fed officials have stressed the next move could either be to raise or lower its benchmark interest rates. Investors think the next move by the Fed will be to cut interest rates, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch tool.
But since the Fed’s meeting last month, even the most dovish Fed officials have dismissed calls for immediate interest rate cuts.
Reaction to the unrest wasn’t immediately apparent in the stock market, with major indexes SPX, +0.55% higher in mid-day trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.30% was also up over 70 points to 26,256.
Yields on the 10-year Treasury note TMUBMUSD10Y, +1.55% have fallen 75 basis points from the 52-week high of 3.232 hit in early November
