US President Joe Biden received the head of the US central bank Jerome Powell for a rare interview on Tuesday, against a backdrop of galloping inflation, but he promised to preserve the independence of the powerful “Fed“.
The 79-year-old Democrat, with Jerome Powell and Finance Minister Janet Yellen in the Oval Office, said he wanted to discuss his “highest priority: responding to inflation to successfully transition from a recovering economy to sustained growth” and sustainable.
The meeting is unusual because the Biden administration has generally stayed away from this independent institution. Joe Biden, however, assured, in a short statement to the press, that his “plan“to control prices”started with a simple premise: respect the Fed, respect the independence of the Fed“.
He also considered that the members of the central bank were “totally concentrated” on price control which is, with support for employment, their mission. Jerome Powell did not speak to journalists.
In a column published on Monday by the Wall Street Journal, the market reference daily, the American president had already made a point of standing out from his “predecessor“Donald Trump whom he accused of having”belittled” the Fed. The former Republican president repeatedly attacked the Fed in general and in particular Jerome Powell, who was his candidate to lead the powerful central bank, and whom Joe Biden chose to keep at his post.
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