Hello, and welcome to the Dear J Letter episode of Slate Money, your guide to the business and finance news of the week, a week in which

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin seems to have broken up with Fed Chair J. Powell.

I am Felix Simon of Axios. I'm here with Emily Peck of Huffpost.

Hello. I'm here with Anna Shemansky of Breaking Views. Hello. We are going to talk about this breakup, which came in the form of a letter from Manusin to Powell, a letter which we're going to unpack. We're going to talk about a whole bunch of companies that have filed to go public this week. We're going to talk about Airbnb. We're going to talk about Affirm. We're going to talk about DoorDash. We're even sort of on person going to talk about Peloton, which turns out to have been a large part of Affirm's business. And we have a slate plus segment about traveling for the holidays. Should you do it even if you think you're going to be safe? Emily is shaking her head. Emily, should you travel for the holidays. Should you do it even if you think you're going to be safe?

Emily is shaking her head.

Emily, should you travel for the holidays?

Absolutely not.

Do not travel for the holidays.

The Slate Plus segment is a little bit more involved in that, but that's the TLDR.

Stay tuned.

All of that coming up on Slate Money.

So let's talk about the Federal Reserve and this amazing dynamic duo that we've talked about before on this show of Jay Powell and Stephen Mnuchin, working hand and glove together to provide the kind of backstop that has

undergirded a surprisingly strong recovery from our spring doldrums.

Looks like suddenly this handing glove, we love each other, relationship between Stephen Mnuchin and

Jay Powell, has become a massive

great fight. What on earth is going on? Emily, do you have a clue? I have a clue. It appears that

the honeymoon period between Steve and Jay is over, as you said, because on Thursday, Steve wrote him like a Dear John letter,

essentially. Steve Mnuchin wrote to the Fed and said, everything seems a lot better now.

It's not you, it's me. Yeah. Yeah, everything seems better now in the economy. Banks are doing well and we don't need some of the emergency measures we put in place back in the spring. And Anna can talk more about the specifics of those measures because I'm probably not the best one to explain them, but they involved basically Congress letting the Fed lend out a bunch

of money to organizations that normally doesn't lend a bunch of money to.

It didn't even lend that much of the money.

And again, I would defer to Anna's expertise here.

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