Brian Stewart.

Welcome to a special Thursday edition of Wall Street Lunch.

Thanks for joining us in Kim Kahn's absence.

Always special to be here. Indeed. Talk to us about

where we're at Thursday afternoon, July 17th. I think the biggest theme so far this week has been

the increasing tension between Trump and Powell. Trump's gotten more belligerent about removing Powell lately.

There were signs yesterday that his firing might be imminent.

However, Trump backed off from that.

So we're kind of still in the limbo that we've been in for a while with Trump sniping

at Powell and

Powell maintaining a stony silence about the pressure that he's feeling.

It's a complicated subject.

In the macro view, the most important issue is the independence of the Fed.

There's a concern that if politicians start either directly

fixing interest rates or have enough leverage over the Fed that they have a huge influence on

the current interest rate that will just end up with a zero interest rate in perpetuity.

It's always going to be in a politician's best interest to have the lowest possible interest

rates that gets you low mortgage rates.

It gets you low borrowing rates.

So there's always going to be political pressure to have rates super low.

Trump, in fact, is pushing for an extremely low rate.

He's called on multiple occasions for rates to be cut by three percentage points, so down to

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