BIDEN PLOTS INFLATION FIGHT WITH FED CHAIR POWELL AS THE NATION WORRIES
But says he would not attempt to direct the course of central bank
Focused on relentlessly rising prices, President Joe Biden plotted inflation-fighting strategy Tuesday with the chairman of the Federal Reserve, with the fate of the economy and his own political prospects increasingly dependent on the actions of the government’s central bank.
Biden hoped to demonstrate to voters that he was attuned to their worries about higher gasoline, grocery and other prices while still insisting an independent Fed will act free from political pressure.
Like Biden, the Fed wants to slow inflation without knocking the U.S. economy into recession, a highly sensitive mission that is to include increasing benchmark interest rates this summer. The president said he would not attempt to direct that course as some previous presidents have tried.
“My plan to address inflation starts with simple proposition: Respect the Fed, respect the Fed’s independence,“Biden said.
The sit-down on a heatdrenched late-spring day was Biden’s latest effort to show his dedication to containing the 8.3 percent leap in consumer prices over the past year. Rising gas and food costs have angered many Americans heading into the midterm elections, putting Democrats’ control of the House and Senate at risk.
Biden is running out of options on his own. His past attempts — oil releases from the strategic reserve, improving port operations and calls to investigate price gouging — have fallen short of satisfactory results. High prices have undermined his efforts to highlight the low 3.6 percent unemployment rate, leaving
years he was repairing instruments for guitar shops all over the city. By the time he was 12 he’d made so much money the IRS came calling for their share in taxes, he said.
He eventually was creating custom instruments for professionals, museums and private collectors.
When he was still a teenager, he wanted to show one off to the folk musician Harvey Reid.
Powers and his dad bought tickets to Reid’s San Diego show. When they got to their seats, Powers recognized a man sitting nearby: Bob Taylor.
They talked guitars. He showed Taylor what he’d made. Powers remembered the guitar maker leaving impressed.
Taylor largely forgot the exchange.
But over the years he started hearing about some guy in Oceanside who was making killer instruments.
Around 2010 at a trade show, Taylor happened to see Powers play with San Diego icon Jason Mraz. (A more recent video of the two
on stage shows Powers more than holding his own.)
Taylor asked Powers to hang out. They talked for eight hours.
Weeks later, Taylor was sitting at an El Cajon stop light. He thought about that list he’d shoved in a drawer. He thought about Powers.
For crying out loud, the guy’s middle name was literally “Taylor,” after his mother.
Taylor made Powers an offer. You can keep your current gig building custom guitars and make a dozen people happy a year, he said. “Or you could take that
same talent and make a couple hundred thousand people happy.”
“Checkmate,” Powers thought.
Powers joined the company in 2011 as its “master guitar builder.”
He oversaw several changes in how instruments
were made, including an overhaul of an acoustic guitar’s internal structure. Known as V-Class Bracing, the redesign gave musicians more control over pitch and allowed notes to hit louder and longer.
Guitar World called the shift “revolutionary.”
Powers also impressed his bosses with how he learned other parts of the business, from marketing to human resources, and he was named co-owner in 2019.
Last year, the company became one of the few prominent instrument makers to shift ownership to its approximately 1,200 employees. At the time, leaders described the move as a way to keep the business independent.
The two founders eventually decided Powers should take both their jobs. His first day as president, CEO and chief designer was May 3.
Powers also has a music degree from UC San Diego. He lives in Carlsbad with his wife and three children: two boys and a girl, all under 12.
Taylor, 67, and Listug, 69, will continue as co-chairmen of the company’s four-person board and as “senior advisers.”
Taylor said he hopes to devote more time to other businesses, including his kitchenware maker Stella Falone. Taylor Guitars has long pushed for ways to improve their supply chain, from recycling urban lumber to replanting trees in Cameroon, and the former president hopes to keep turning discarded wood into new products.
Letting Powers take the lead fills Taylor with relief.
“I felt my company could survive me,” he said.