Trump his own best choice to head the Fed

PRESIDENT

Trump should name himself to be head of the Federal Reserve.

Eliminate the middle man. Save on a salary. Cut to the nitty-gritty: The Fed is not going to do anything Wall Street or Washington doesn’t like, no matter who is the boss.

So pick the one guy who’s in charge of Washington (at least in his mind) and beholden to Wall Street. That one man is Donald J. Trump.

And this way, when Trump changes his mind about interest rates — too low when he was a mere candidate, yet doesn’t want them raised now that he’s president — he won’t have to explain his flip-flops.

It won’t only save money, it will also be fun.

As Fed chairman, Trump wouldn’t need the Fed’s Open Market Committee anymore.

He could just tweet out his interest rate decisions — “No hike this month. Isn’t it great!?” — any- time, day or night.

The excitement would be palpable all over the world.

But mainly, naming himself chairman of the Fed would end the pretense of its being an independent agency.

And Trump naming Trump would also put to rest the myth that the Federal Reserve is only concerned about economic growth and inflation, when the stock market is the primary concern.

I’m just kidding, of course, about the president taking over at the Fed. Trump is too blunt. Clear to a fault. He could never write those convoluted and meaningless guidance statements that the Fed has been issuing for decades.

I’m just having some fun here because Wall Street has been playing a parlor game for months trying to guess who’ll take over the Fed on Feb. 3 when Janet Yellen’s first term expires.

Will it be Jerome Powell, a current Fed governor and a lawyer, who worked on Wall Street and is said to be favored — at least as of 3 p.m. Monday — by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and all the boys at Goldman Sachs?

Powell is one of the swamp creatures that the president has promised to send packing — but that was when Trump was only a candidate. No telling what he thinks now.

Then there are candidates — at least as far as the rumor mill is concerned — Kevin Warsh and John Taylor.

Warsh is young, 47, but he was a Fed governor. More important — and working against him — is the fact that he’d probably want interest rates raised aggressively at the first sign of economic vigor (which probably isn’t going to happen in our lifetime, so don’t worry). Buzzzz! Warsh is a loser. Ditto for Taylor on rates. The former Treasury undersecretary is now a professor at Stanford University. He’s been a critic of the Fed — joining such august company as the president himself. So buzzzz him out! Another loser.

Gary Cohn, the director of the president’s National Economic Council and former Goldman president, is also said to be up for the job. He’s was in Goldman’s swamp for so long that it’s said he grew gills.

In the president’s current state of mind, that’s probably a good thing. But Cohn said something bad about the president a few weeks back, so the president might not be his friend anymore. (Nah, nah, nah. That’ll teach him.)

Then there’s Glenn Hubbard, a well-respected economist, former candidate for the Fed’s top job and now the dean of Columbia University Business School. He’d be perfect for the Fed job, so he probably won’t get it.

Last but not least, there’s Yellen, who took over the leadership of the Fed when the economy was doing nothing and continued to help it do nothing. But she has managed to cause a stock market bubble, which the swamp people and those aligned with Goldman love — at least while it lasts.

Trump’s announcement of his candidate for the Fed chair could come this week. Or next week. Or ... whenever he gets around to it. The appointment has to be approved by the Senate.

I just wrote about 800 words — and others combined have written a millions — about an event that isn’t really going to matter very much. Whoever becomes Fed chairman will only be able to do what the financial markets allow him or her to do. And right now, that isn’t much. I’m sticking with my thesis that the current Fed is powerless — it can’t raise rates adequately because the economy is still too fragile, and because that would send US debt payments soaring.

And the Fed can’t lower rates because they are about as low as they can go, and because the ultra-low yields on savings have already created a crisis for savers in this country.

If savers don’t get a reasonable return on their money, they can’t spend. And if they don’t spend, then the economy doesn’t grow by very much.

It’s a Catch-22 — the Fed is screwed if it raises rates and screwed if it doesn’t. Add to that the Fed’s need to get rid of trillions of dollars worth of bonds that it purchased over the years with freshly printed Quantitative Easing money. I wouldn’t take the Fed job if it came with the keys to Fort Knox and the afterhours password to the vault.

That’s why Donald Trump should give himself the job. How hard could it be: A couple of 140character messages, and the Fed will be great again.