Powell Pushed to Edge of Fed’s Boundaries in Fight for Economy
By Craig Torres
By pushing the Federal Reserve into corners of financial markets it has mostly shunned in its 106-year history, Chairman Jerome Powell is running into some thorny questions. Like, for instance, how to maintain independence from the U.S. Treasury when the economic-support package Congress passed says they should work together? … “This is going to lead to a complete re-examination of the role of central banking and the Fed’s independence,” warns Karen Shaw Petrou, a managing partner at Federal Financial Analytics, a Washington research firm. The Fed’s steps into credit allocation are tantamount to “a complete redesign of central banking on the fly.” Congress has authorized as much as $454 billion for the Treasury Department to use in consort with programs the Fed can leverage to loan up to $4.5 trillion.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-09/powell-pushed-to-edge-of-fed-s-boundaries-in-fight-for-economy?sref=BSO3yKhf
