Where is the line? When do financial markets tell Donald Trump that enough is enough with his efforts to meddle with the Federal Reserve? We may be closer to that point than many think.
Academics, lawyers and former Fed officials are aghast at the president’s efforts to oust Lisa Cook, a governor at the world’s most important central bank. The comparison with Turkey is all too compelling — emerging-markets investors still swap horror stories about the period when its autocratic leader declared high interest rates to be the “mother of all evil”, sending inflation soaring and frying the country’s financial markets.
In the US, however, markets appear conspicuously relaxed. Far more focus has fallen on the latest earnings release from Nvidia than on this monetary manoeuvring. If you were ever in doubt about the benefits of operating the world’s biggest reserve currency, put those quibbles to bed now. No other country can get away with this stuff the way the US can.