A Phil Hall Op-Ed: On Sunday evening, Jerome Powell was presented with the 2026 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. According to the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, which presented the award to the former Fed chairman and current Fed governor, Powell was honored for “protecting the independence of the Federal Reserve, which is critical to the stability of the global economy, despite years of personal attacks and threats from the highest levels of government.”
Well, yes and no. On one hand, Powell withstood a blistering level of astonishing insults leveled by President Trump and his minions, most notably Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte. That culminated in the misuse of the Department of Justice resources to force an investigation into whether Powell committed perjury during a Senate hearing last year when asked about cost overruns on the Fed headquarters renovation.
By not cowering in the wake of an unprecedented assault on his personal character and by refusing to kowtow to Trump’s inane attempt to fire Fed Gov. Lisa Cook over a spurious Pulte-planted accusation that she committed mortgage fraud, Powell has been a profile in courage.
But in his award acceptance speech, Powell was a profile in chutzpah by claiming the Federal Reserve has been the best friend to the American people and the savior of the economy. Powell noted that since the Fed’s founding in 1913, the agency has used its “monetary policy tools to promote maximum employment and stable prices. We regulate and supervise banks. We operate critical parts of the payments system. And we use our powerful liquidity tools as a first responder in times of financial crisis.”
Anyone who is old enough to recall the Great Depression or spoke with parents and grandparents who lived through those dark years might be surprised to learn how the Fed supposedly promoted “maximum employment and stable prices” while the country’s economy was in ruins. And those of us old enough to the recall the high inflation years of the 1970s might have trouble remembering when the Fed rode to the rescue. But you don’t have to tap into history books to find the facts at odds with Powell’s Fed-talk.
“Over the past 20 years, we have been called upon to forcefully deploy those emergency tools in two world-historical crises that pushed the financial system and the economy to the point of failure—the Global Financial Crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic,” he continued. “While these twin crises created great hardship for families and businesses, the US economy performed by far the best of any comparable economy through those difficult years. Many in the private and public sectors played a hand in achieving that outcome. I would like to single out the work in both crises of the career staff at the Fed, a truly extraordinary group of committed public servants who serve all Americans.”
I’m sorry, but what exactly did the Fed do to prevent the Global Financial Crisis? And more than a few economists on both sides of the political aisle would be hard pressed to praise the Fed for its actions in the years after the Great Recession wrecked the US economy.
As for the pandemic and its aftermath, wasn’t it Powell who dismissed the rapidly rising inflation under President Biden as “transitory” and waited too long before acknowledging the crisis had metastasized? Powell earned the wrath of both Trump and Sen. Elizabeth Powell (D-MA) for his dismal leadership, and it is no mean feat to unite those polar opposites in a common agreement.
Powell sheepishly claimed that when the Fed makes mistakes, “we acknowledge them and change course” – yeah after considerable damage is done. He added, “We do not take into account the fortunes of any political party or politician in making those decisions,” but that doesn’t explain why he abruptly decided to cut rates right before the 2024 election, which was widely seen as an effort to juice up a stagnant economy and, by extension, help Vice President Kamala Harris’ sinking presidential campaign.
Powell berated anyone who sought to question the Fed’s actions, declaring, “If any administration finds a way to remove Fed officials over policy differences, then future administrations will do so as well. The public would lose faith that the central bank will make decisions based only on what’s best for all Americans. The Fed’s credibility would be lost.”
But that raises the question: What if the Fed is seriously goofing up its job? What can be done to fix things before they get out of hand? That happened on too many occasions when Fed decisions were not in the best interests of Americans.
Serious Fed reform cannot happen under the Trump administration, which destroyed its credibility on the topic with childish and foolish behavior. And while there have been several attempts by thought leaders to call for overhauls and even the elimination of the Fed – most notably by former Rep. Ron Paul – there has yet to be a serious proposal on how to replace the central bank or to make it accountable when it goes wrong. The Fed’s leadership is not accountable to anyone, and that is a problem.
Obviously, Powell’s new award was given by an organization that dislikes Trump, so there is clearly a partisan edge to his honor – which is ironic in view of Powell’s insistence that the Fed must be above partisan politics.
And one has to wonder what other audacious comments Powell will be making from the sidelines as a Fed governor in the weeks to come. Somehow, I doubt he will be going out of his way to help Kevin Warsh, the new Fed chairman. Maybe this will be the start of Powell’s revenge tour?
Phil Hall is editor of Weekly Real Estate News. He can be reached at [email protected].
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