Stocks swoon as Trump hits Fed Reserve
Market sheds 500 points as tech firms stumble
President Donald Trump responded to falling stock prices Thursday by continuing to throw rocks at the Federal Reserve, which he has described as “crazy,” “loco,” “going wild” and “out of control” for slowly raising interest rates against the backdrop of a booming economy.
No other modern president has publicly attacked the Fed with such venom or frequency. Indeed, some scholars said the only close historical parallel was with President Andrew Jackson, who campaigned successfully in the 1830s to close the Fed’s predecessor, the Second Bank of the United States.
Trump’s pointed remarks reflect the high political stakes less than a month before midterm elections that have been cast by his political opponents as a referendum on his presidency. Trump has been riding the economy hard, bragging about job creation, tax cuts
and reduced federal regulation, and claiming credit for the rise of the stock market. Now that the market has lost 5 percent of its value in the past week, Trump is insisting someone else is to blame.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index closed at 2,728.37 on Thursday, down 2.06 percent.
In fact, despite the stock market’s plunge, the U.S. economy continues to grow, which is what is prompting the Fed to raise interest rates and drawing the president’s ire. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has said that the economy is in a “particularly bright moment” and that he sees no clouds on the horizon.
The stock market sell-off instead appears to reflect the movement of money into bonds, a normal consequence of higher interest rates since those securities pay more as rates rise; concern about the health of the global economy; and hesitations about the value of tech stocks.
But after hitching his political fortunes to the rise of the stock market, Trump is now looking to decouple himself from its fall. Republicans are instead emphasizing continued economic growth and the lowest unemployment rate since 1969.
So far, the president’s comments have made little impression on market expectations about Fed policy. Unlike Jackson’s concerted campaign, Trump’s attacks appear curiously unmoored from the policies of his own administration or the long-standing goals of the Republican Party. Trump’s own aides have insisted that the president’s remarks are personal musings, not an attempt to dictate policy.
The Fed has also brushed off the attacks; it still expected to raise rates in December for the fourth time this year.
Powell, selected for the job by Trump, said at a September news conference that Trump’s views would not influence the Fed’s decisions. “We don’t consider political factors or things like that,” Powell said. “That’s who we are, that’s what we do, and that’s just the way it’s always going to be for us.”
Powell emphasized that the decision to raise rates to a range between 2 percent and 2.25 percent was not intended to get in the way of continued growth. “My colleagues and I are doing all we can to keep the economy strong, healthy and moving forward,” he said.
A spokeswoman declined to comment Thursday.
Some experts warned that a continued assault on the Fed could have long-lasting consequences. Peter Conti-Brown, a professor of legal studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of a political history of the Fed, pointed to the example of the FBI, another institution Trump has repeatedly attacked by raising questions about the integrity of its decision making. Conti-Brown said technocratic institutions are insulated from political pressure by public confidence. If confidence erodes, it becomes harder for technocrats to resist the politicians.
The FBI has seen a loss of leadership, an erosion of morale and an increase in congressional scrutiny. “How long before the Fed is looking at its political context and saying, ‘We can’t stick our heads out as far as we need to,’ ” Conti-Brown asked rhetorically. “How long will people stay if the job itself becomes terrible, and there are protesters everywhere you go?”