Why: Things are changing very quickly. We created this page to help make sense of all that’s happening in our post ”Liberation Day” financial world.
Written by Zach Stein, CIO at Carbon Collective.
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Bonds could get hit too 😬
Monday April 21, 2025
US Markets Fall as Trump Threatens to (Illegally) Fire Fed Chair
Trump's threats to fire the Fed Chair are rattling markets. Which maybe in part because they don't really make sense.
Trump wants Jerome Powell to lower interest rates. (The Fed is supposed to be immune from political pressure, because politicians ALWAYS want lower interest rates while they're in power).
But the problem is there is a disconnect between what the Fed pays for the Federal Effective Funds Rate (how much the Fed pays banks to keep their cash with them) and commercial interest rates on a loan or a mortgage.
Why? The 10 Year Treasury. And the rate of the 10 Year Treasury is really based upon supply/demand signals from treasury investors.
And a non-independent Fed is making long term investors in US Treasuries really worried that rates will need to be higher in the future to cope with higher inflation and/or the end of US Treasuries being the global standard for "risk-free" rate of return.
So conversely firing the Fed Chair and putting in a political stooge, could RAISE borrowing rates in the US even if the chair drops rates at the front end because investors will be pricing in a correction.
So yeah. Maybe Trump is just looking for someone to blame for a recession, but this doesn't make any sense if his goal is to really lower borrowing rates.