Aloha and Namaste, everyone, and welcome to In Politics with John Howman, a puck in Odyssey Joint,

featuring lively, in-depth conversations with the people who cruise the corridors of power in America,

sculpting and shaving the ebb and flow of our politics and our culture.

At the end of a week that began with Donald Trump's Justice Department launching a criminal

investigation and therefore apparently threatening to prosecute the chairman of the Federal

Reserve, Jerome Powell, on transparently specious grounds.

And that ended with Powell seeming more secure at his job than he has in

months. And with Trump now preparing to head off next week to mingle and strut among the world's

self-appointed financial and business elites in Davos, Switzerland. We are delighted to have

with us one of the most esteemed economic policy gurus in America

to break it all down, Jason Furman, whose resume includes tutelages under the wings of both Nobel Prize-winning

economist Joseph Stiglitz and revered former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, stints as economic

policy director for Barack Obama's 2008 campaign,

deputy director of the National Economic Council under Larry Summers and Gene Sperling

during Obama's first term in the White House, and the pinnacle for him, chairman of the

Council of Economic Advisers during Barack Obama's second term.

Now comfortably ensconced amid the acres of Ivy

in Cambridge, Massachusetts as a professor

in both the Harvard Economics Department

and at the Kennedy School of Government,

Jason also contributes regularly

to the New York Times opinion section

...