This is a column by Terrence Wall.
First, let me say, that congratulations to myself. This week the Crap Times leftist newspaper has finally, after 20 years of writing, finally declared me a “right-wing blogger.” Man, took long enough! I’ll wear that as a badge of honor. Thank you for the affirmation. Now, onto trimming the fat in government.
If I were Trump, I would demand that all employees of the federal government turn in their resignations by January 20th. Then Trump and his cabinet secretaries could re-hire those that they wish while not hiring back those they don’t want. But you say, what about the civil service protections? Well, civil service protections may be unconstitutional. As head of the executive branch, the president has the absolute right to hire and fire as he sees fit. Otherwise, the Constitution means nothing – if the third branch of government, the courts, can dictate to the president who he can hire and fire.
The president doesn’t have the right to fire employees of the courts. And neither do the courts have a right to prevent the firing of employees by the president when he takes office. I bet you didn’t know that the Supreme Court of Wisconsin and of the U.S. both get to set their own budgets and the legislature and Congress must grant them whatever amount they wish to spend. That’s part of the co-equal branches of government structure and part of the foundation of democracy.
Liberal former chief justice Shirley Abrahamson herself told me that when I asked her what her budget was for rent (when the court had to temporarily move out of the Capitol for renovation.)
In any case, there’s a little understood purpose to requiring everyone turn in their resignations when the new head of a company or president or governor comes on board.
When you then hire those back those that you want, they clearly understand that their allegiance is to individual who hired them back and not to the prior head of the company or government. And that includes the chair of the Federal Reserve Bank. The Fed chair is appointed by the president and all appointees serve ‘at the pleasure of the president’. The chair doesn’t get to dictate to his boss, the president, when he’ll leave office.
And guess who has been complicit in the conspiracy to enlarge the federal government and create massive deficits and a record national debt? Jerome Powell, that’s who.
Now that the election is over, Fed Chairman Powell should turn in his resignation effective January 20th, either that or Trump should fire him that day. The poor guy has gotten almost everything wrong during his term. If fact, I can’t think of anything he’s gotten right.
He began as chair in 2018, when he was appointed by, ironically, President Trump. And then he was reappointed by Biden, so I guess they’re both at fault! Haha.
$36 trillion in national debt. $1 trillion in new debt being added every 3 months! Huge deficits. All at a cost of $1.5 billion in interest every year! And that’s just the interest…. If you were chair, it’s statistically probable that any actions you took would have had better outcomes than Powell’s choices.
It’s not a coincidence that during Biden’s term federal government spending was off like a rocket, which required a massive increase in government borrowing. Quarterly bond auctions, otherwise known as borrowing auctions jumped from around $26 billion to $40 billion. That’s more than a 50% increase! On a regular basis. Whoa.
And if Powell refuses to leave office if the president terminates him, he is the one who would be creating a constitutional crisis, by saying his boss can’t fire him. Can you imagine – then every government employee would make that claim. And Powell cannot legally use taxpayer money to fund attorney fees to fight his being fired. That would be misappropriation of taxpayer money and fraud.
Imagine the Fed chair (and other government employees) saying, “I won’t leave; the president doesn’t get to fire us over a policy dispute.” Ahh, hello dumbasses, that’s exactly why the president gets to fire you – so he can implement his policies, not yours! He’s the one who got elected, not you. But in the case of Powell, the president could also fire him for a variety of reasons, including a.) incompetence, there’s plenty of evidence of that; b.) election interference, since the Fed waited to lower rates until right before the election, trying to boost Harris’s chances, but then, as soon as Trump is clearly the winner of the election, the Fed starts talking about not lowering interest rates. (The one rate cut the day after the election was already baked in and the Fed had publicly committed to that.)
You see, the Fed under Powell has been focused on month-to-month economic and performance statistics, which is the wrong approach. They’re looking in their rearview mirror to drive the bus. Instead, the Fed should be focused on producing a stable dollar and a stable interest rate environment. (Steve Forbes explained this well in his speech at the Wisconsin Historical Society this past Thursday and in a private dinner with a half dozen others and me.)
When the Fed quickly raises (or even lowers) interest rates, it creates massive risks and failures throughout the economy – in the private sector. Businesses and banks get trapped with the old rates when rates are falling or when rates are rising, the new rates crush them when loans come up for refinancing. The Fed doesn’t seem to care about the impact of its decisions on the private sector. While they play around with rates, businesses are struggling and at risk of going broke.
It’s like when an RV is barreling down a mountain road, approaching the ‘out of control’ point of no return. The way to slow the RV down is both to start slower at the top of the hill by reducing speed and by shifting to a lower gear. Instead, the Fed is pushing hard on the brakes, and they’re smokin’, and now the brakes are at risk of burning out and failing, causing a crash.
Instead, the emphasis of the Fed should be on a stable economy, stable interest rate policy, and a stable dollar, then everyone would be able to focus on growing steadily, they wouldn’t incur massive unknown risks caused by the Fed, and the economy itself would grow like it did under Reagan and GHW Bush, even growing enough to pay down that massive federal debt.
The dispute over whether the Fed chair can be fired can be summed up as this. The Federal Open Market Committee elects its own chair. Fine. They can elect whichever one of their board members that they wish. But the chair of the entire Federal Reserve Bank is a different matter, and that’s where people get confused. The president appoints the head of the Fed. And any appointee is subject to dismissal by the same authority – the president.
Otherwise, if that were not true, it would be a free-for-all within the federal government as anyone who is appointed could claim they can’t be dismissed, preventing a new president from appointing his own choices — so the can change policies! In fact, the whole purpose of the president’s authority is to change policy. Otherwise, the appointment of someone by a prior president could be used to stop or slow the implementation of change that should come with a new election.
If appointees can’t be removed from office, then what’s the point of an election? This whole business could easily be rectified by the new Congress though, which could pass a law to change the appointment of the Fed chair to coincide with the term of a new president. Right now, that Fed chair term ends about one year and four months into the term of a new president. Just make it line up – January 20th of each presidential term. Every new president should be able to appoint a new Fed chair immediately. Likewise, the new law should say that the Fed chair is also the chair of the FOMC as well, so that we end that confusion, and that the FOMC chair does not have to have served previously on the FOMC board either, so new blood can be brought in.
Now let’s look at Powell’s tenure…and the reasons why it’s so vitally important for him to leave immediately. First and foremost are his own statements in private and public as reported in the media that he will refuse to leave office if the president fires him. He’s creating a constitutional crisis, he’s defying the president, and he’s saying that no one on this planet has the authority to revoke his employment regardless of how utterly bad he has performed. That defiance of authority over him is reason enough to remove him from office.
Then there is the Fed’s performance under Powell, who has totally f’d up the country’s finances – $36 trillion in debt – massive government borrowing and spending – all causing massive inflation – which he then has tried to slap down by jacking up interest rates to destroy private sector hiring, investing and consuming – rather than stopping the government spending and borrowing that is inflating the money supply. Powell had the power to say no to all that borrowing and printing of the money supply, but didn’t. He was complicit in the act of bankrupting our country, and he’s the head of the Fed!
Remember, inflation is caused by the government printing and borrowing money which it then spends. It is NOT caused by the private sector. The private sector will always self-correct, but government never does. This is why you can’t rely on Powell to bring down inflation, because he contributed to causing it. He and the Treasury secretary. Get rid of them both.
Here’s the deal. Trump can’t wait a full year for Powell’s term to be up. Powell should resign early so Trump can immediately implement his Make America Great Again Recovery Plan. And don’t let anyone fool you, if Powell does not resign, Trump can remove him as head of the Fed. Any presidential appointee serves at the pleasure of the president, that’s the constitution and the law, and if Trump wants him out, then he’s out. The Fed chairman is not invincible and does not work for himself; he reports to the president, who hires him, and he can be removed, at least as head of the bank.
When you consider all the screw-ups under Powell and throw in that under his leadership the Fed governors had to select their pronouns for their emails, then you know they were distracted and out of focus – and then you understand why they were so far off their targets.
And now the Fed is steering the economy towards another trainwreck. With higher interest rates, all those borrowers out there will have to refinance their loans with higher interest rates – more than double what their current rates are. That means doubling their debt service costs. If you own commercial buildings with fixed leases, you can’t adjust the rents, (least apartment buildings can increase rents once a year to keep up), leaving you exposed when rates increase. But either way, the Fed is guiding the U.S. towards a massive series of debt defaults, which in turn will create another banking crisis.
The next argument is that the chairman went along with the idea that banks could and should buy government bonds as security and classify those as appropriate assets to hold in their investment accounts. Now, any first-year economics student knows that is a bad idea since bond values would dive once the Fed increases interest rates.
Either he knew when he started raising interest rates that the banks would be massively exposed to seeing those bond values decline, and as such, he should have given time for the banks to exit those bond holdings. But of course, he didn’t want all those bonds to be sold at once, since that could have adversely affected the bond sales of the Treasury department! So he was in on the scam! Instead, he let banks see massive declines in their bond holdings on paper and he let banks fail, actually he caused them to fail, because he raised rates so fast that the banks couldn’t react in time.
If you own an apartment building and the interest rate doubles when you refinance because the loan came due, you are forced to increase the rent. Likewise, the cost of constructing a new home has skyrocket – due to those same high interest rates. And housing is about 1/3 of the total inflation factor, which means that higher housing costs (caused by the Fed) is contributing to the inflation rate. If the Fed were to lower interest rates, then the increases in rent and housing costs will decline as well, thereby reducing inflation. It’s circular, but Powell doesn’t get that. His higher rates are causing higher rents, which in turn causes higher inflation.
Likewise, reduce government spending and that too will lower inflation. So let’s get new Fed leadership immediately and a new approach rather than waiting a year.
Fun Facts About T. Wall – T. Wall has an economics degree from the UW-Madison and a Masters degree in real estate valuation from the #1 real estate school in the nation – the Graaskamp Center at the Wisconsin School of Business. He’s been reading financial papers and reports and history since freshman year of high school. Wisconsin Right Now is a news organization focused on covering the news from a conservative point of view, in particular on politics and policy issues through analysis and opinions, and is protected by the first amendment of the United States constitution. WRN does not make endorsements of candidates or direct readers to vote for or against any candidate or issue. On October 18 and November 23, 2023 Donald Trump tweeted out on Trump’s Truth Social account T. Wall’s October 6th column on Trump’s property valuations. T. Wall has appeared on Fox News, Jesse Waters Show on Fox, Newsmax, CBS, NBC, Spectrum News 1, USA Today, X.com, YouTube, and numerous Madison and Milwaukee news programs and local newspapers (Wisconsin State Journal, Capital Times, Middleton Review, Middleton Times Tribune, and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and a dozen other Wisconsin papers) and
previously wrote a column for InBusiness magazine and the Middleton Times Tribune for five years each. T. Wall holds a degree from the UW in economics and an M.S. in real estate analysis and valuation and his full time career is as a real estate developer. Disclaimer: The opinions of the writer are not necessarily those of this publication or the left!
