Contrary to widespread belief...

All-In

"Contrary to a widespread belief, no rule of written law prevents Presidents from firing the Chair of the Federal Reserve (“Fed Chair”), the nation’s independent central bank."

If you missed Jerome Powell's press conference, here are the highlights:

Former New York Fed senior trader Joseph Wang:

Link

---

And do we really need these polls?

I suppose I should comment a bit on the election.

I was a little surprised by the breadth of Trump’s win, but clearly the message from the legacy media, and the message from the middle-class that I came from, were two very different messages.

Most - but not all - of my friends were Trump supporters, but I understand the concerns of all sides. I knew that most Americans weren’t buying the constant and condescending, “everything is great, what’s your problem?” MSM propaganda, so a Trump win was not a shocker.

I was very skeptical of polling, as usual. Did you see the “prominent pollster” who a couple days before the election said that her new poll had Harris winning Iowa by 4 points? Trump won Iowa by over 13 points.

Since the election, most mainstream pundits - especially the I.Y.I.¹ academics who give them intellectual cover - remain shocked - shocked! - that Harris didn’t win, and think that Trump won because of racist Hispanics, misogynist black guys, and white supremacists. Zero introspection, again. Good luck with that strategy.

And most people are really sick of this crap:

Anyway, I love America and want us all to do well. For starters, we need to stop bombing people in countries most Americans could not identify on a map, and we need to stop making Larry Fink’s net worth our #1 priority.

To quote Adam Smith:

“This disposition to admire—and almost to worship—the rich and the powerful, and to despise or at least neglect persons of poor and mean condition, is (on one hand) necessary to establish and maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, and (on the other) the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments. Moralists all down the centuries have complained that wealth and greatness are often given the respect and admiration that only wisdom and virtue should receive, and that poverty and weakness are quite wrongly treated with the contempt that should be reserved for vice and folly.”

As an aside, there remains no general MSM recognition that people hate inflation (Claudia Sahm reminded me of this this week,) though even Jay Powell now understands that (after his outfit intentionally goosed it). Whether he cares or not remains to be seen.

Three non-Republican left-of-center accounts I’d recommend - that I think have done an excellent job of analyzing the election - are Matt Stoller, David Sirota and Mark Ames. Matt and Mark have followed me for a long time, David just started. Not sure how long he’ll stay.

As for Trump, to his credit he started off by saying Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley will not be in his Administration, which is encouraging. However, we need to watch out for all the little Mike Pompeo neo-con clones out there (e.g., Brian Hook) who will no doubt be angling for a piece of the pie. Many new Trump voters were RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard and Ron Paul voters, so if Trump alienates them, that’s a huge warning sign.

As before, I will praise Trump on the things I like, and criticize him on the things I don’t. Remember - he wanted negative rates and MORE QE last time around (and also said there was “no inflation.”)

Don’t expect monetary policy to suddenly become sane.

Some of the old-timers here may remember a thread I did in October 2017, explaining my take on the 2016 election. If you’ve never read it, it might help you understand why I’m the way I am.

And, as always, this remains true:

Link

Not a huge post today, but I’m sure I’ll get back to that soon enough.

Thanks again to the new subscribers - after a lull, things have been picking up nicely this past month.