Independence Jay? Inflation and attacks on the Fed
Economist Podcasts
The Economist
4.4 • 5K Ratings
🗓️ 14 January 2026
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
More inflation numbers, more jabs by President Donald Trump at Jay Powell, the Federal Reserve chairman. We ask what the Fed is doing, should be doing and is being pressured to do. Six years after the official Brexit divorce, we count the costs and ask what making-up is now possible. And how self-help books reveal the anxieties of their times.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Economist. |
| 0:10.1 | Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist. |
| 0:13.2 | I'm your host, Jason Palmer. |
| 0:15.0 | Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. |
| 0:25.3 | Thank you. fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. It's been six years since the real, final, official divorce between Britain and the EU. |
| 0:32.2 | Time to take stock then of the economic effects of the breakup, and consider the benefits of, |
| 0:37.3 | again, becoming, |
| 0:38.3 | maybe a bit more than just friends. |
| 0:42.3 | And we take a look at self-help books down the ages. |
| 0:45.3 | They are an ever-evolving indicator, |
| 0:48.3 | not of what people want to become, but of what they are. |
| 0:51.3 | ... but of what they are. |
| 1:02.6 | First up, though, though. |
| 1:14.4 | There aren't too many people who excitedly await inflation data from America's number crunchers. |
| 1:17.8 | And the ones that came out yesterday were pretty short on drama. |
| 1:21.0 | 2.7% year-on-on-year was the headline number. |
| 1:24.4 | Bang on what was predicted and the same as the month before. |
| 1:29.0 | One keen watcher will have been President Donald Trump, who routinely uses the numbers as just another cudgel to beat Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve. |
| 1:34.7 | Mr. Trump wants interest rate cuts, like all the time. Mr. Powell wants to do his job, |
| 1:41.0 | mainly keeping inflation down without crimping the economy, which has not meant |
| 1:45.0 | cuts all the time. And in what I guess could just maybe be a coincidence, Mr. Powell recently |
| 1:51.2 | became the subject of a Department of Justice investigation. This is grave stuff, and the normally |
... |
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