对当前美联储和鲍威尔处境的一个深入分析

As Fed Chief, Jerome Powell Navigates an Angry President and Turbulent Markets

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Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chairman, is walking a tightrope as he tries to steer the economy while President Trump attacks the Fed’s moves.

Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chairman, is walking a tightrope as he tries to steer the economy while President Trump attacks the Fed’s moves.CreditSamuel Corum for The New York Times

By Jim Tankersley and Neil Irwin

April 13, 2019

WASHINGTON — As soon as the Federal Reserve chairman, Jerome H. Powell, finished speaking at his December news conference, it was clear, even to him, that he had blown it. Stocks were tumbling. Analysts worried that the Fed was steering the economy into recession.

And President Trump was furious.

Four months later, Mr. Powell and the Fed have mostly repaired the damage, ending a steady march of interest rate increases and signaling that their next policy move may well be a rate cut if the economy continues to soften. Markets have rallied and recession fears have cooled. But one challenge has only worsened for Mr. Powell: Mr. Trump and his escalating anger at the Fed.

The president’s relentless attacks on the central bank, which he blames for slowing United States economic growth, are putting Mr. Powell in a bind as he tries to bolster the economy without feeding fears that he is buckling under political pressure and damaging the integrity of an independent Fed.

Publicly and privately, Mr. Powell rejects any suggestion that Mr. Trump has influenced his, or the Fed’s, actions. Mr. Powell said this year that he would not resign if the president asked him to. Associates say he is prepared to fight any attempt by Mr. Trump to try to fire him.

Yet while Mr. Powell repeatedly denies that Mr. Trump is changing the Fed’s course, the central bank has largely moved in the direction that the president wants. For now, there is little distinction between Mr. Trump’s view that rates should stay low because the economy is strong and the Fed’s view that rates should remain low because the economy is fragile.

How Mr. Powell handles the next few months will be a critical test of his leadership skills. A year into his chairmanship, Mr. Powell is trying to guide the Fed through a highly uncertain moment in the global economy, with slowing growth in Europe and China as well as in the United States, which is feeling the waning effects of Mr. Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax cut and pain from his trade war.

After four consecutive interest rate increases last year on the back of an accelerating economy, Mr. Powell is now executing an abrupt shift in the Fed’s efforts to balance growth and inflation concerns, while under assault from the president who appointed him to the job — and now regrets it.

“Well, I personally think the Fed should drop rates,” Mr. Trump told reporters this month. He has said he intends to nominate political allies like Herman Cain and Stephen Moore to the Fed’s seven-member board — two partisan candidates whose appointments would be a departure from the tradition of Fed leaders, who are more insulated from politics.

Mr. Powell is a lawyer, financier and Fed veteran, chosen by Mr. Trump in part because he fit the president’s “central casting” image of a central banker. According to interviews with colleagues, friends and lawmakers, Mr. Powell has spent the past several months pushing the Fed toward more growth-oriented policies, not because Mr. Trump is demanding it, but because he believes economic data have given the Fed no other choice.

“One thing that has served him well, and has served the committee well, is to always take a fresh look at what’s happening,” said John C. Williams, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and vice chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee. “Not get caught up in ‘We said this in September,’ or, ‘We said this in November,’ but really to say, ‘What do we think is right?’ He’s focused on, ‘Let’s get it right, and then let’s do our best to explain it, in terms of why we’ve shifted our views.’”

Mr. Powell’s difficulties festered for much of last year, as the economy soared with stimulus from Mr. Trump’s tax cuts, more government spending and increased business confidence. Unemployment fell below 4 percent — approaching five-decade lows — wages began to climb and economic growth was heading toward 3 percent.

The Fed, convinced the economy could withstand higher borrowing costs, raised rates three times. But in the weeks leading to the Fed’s final meeting of 2018, ominous signs began to emerge, suggesting that China’s economy, and the global economy as a whole, was slowing. A key indicator based on bond prices was flashing warnings of a possible recession. Yet the Fed raised rates a fourth time at that December meeting, a move that even some Democratic economists called unnecessary.

Mr. Powell tried to pull off what Fed insiders call a “dovish hike” — raising rates while conveying to markets that the end of such increases was in sight. But in Fed forecasts released that day, it appeared that officials intended two rate increases in 2019.

Markets, already spooked, plunged during a news conference after the meeting, as investors interpreted Mr. Powell’s comments as suggesting more rate increases were coming soon, even if the economy slowed. Perhaps most worrisome to investors was his suggestion that another tool it had been deploying to remove stimulus from the economy — the shrinking of its giant portfolio of bonds — would continue on “autopilot.”

In the days that followed, Mr. Trump and his allies called for Mr. Powell to resign or be fired.

“If only the Fed would loosen up a bit so that we don’t have a recession,” Mr. Moore, the conservative economic commentator whom Mr. Trump intends to nomin