Lev Menand on Trump's Attempt to Fire the Fed's Lisa Cook
Odd Lots
Bloomberg
4.4 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 26 August 2025
⏱️ 32 minutes
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Summary
Criticism and threats to Federal Reserve independence have been building for some time in this administration. But it was taken to a new height on August 25, when Trump posted that he intended to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook, a Biden appointee. According to our guest, Columbia Law Professor Lev Menand, this is a big deal that has created an immediate crisis. The Trump administration's argument is that it's firing Lisa Cook "for cause" due to allegations (and these are just allegations at this point) that she committed mortgage fraud. As Lev argues, these allegations alone can't justify the removal of someone in this position. We talk through the legal implications, the immediate path ahead, and what may ultimately be Trump's real aim when it comes to pressuring the Fed.
Read more:
Trump Moves to Fire Fed’s Cook, Setting Up Historic Fight
Powell Opens Door to Interest Rate Cut, Citing Labor Markets
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| 1:22.7 | Hello and welcome to another episode of the Ovalets podcast. I'm Tracy Allaway. |
| 1:24.0 | And I'm Joe Wisenthall. |
| 1:26.6 | Joe, another day, another emergency episode. |
| 1:28.5 | I mean, we're back to emergency episodes, |
| 1:34.4 | and this is obviously one of the big ones. Yeah. So we are recording this on August 26th, and we had news overnight that President Donald Trump intends to fire Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve |
| 1:40.8 | Board. Obviously, this feeds right into the debate over central bank independence |
| 1:46.3 | and what the president actually has a right to do when it comes to hiring and firing. |
| 1:51.4 | And the market reaction this morning, gold up a bit, the dollar down. But what's really interesting |
| 1:57.7 | is we have yields at the long end of the Treasury market picking up, |
| 2:02.7 | which would suggest there's more of a risk premium being built into that market. |
| 2:07.5 | No, totally. |
| 2:08.7 | The concerns overfed independent sort of cast a whole shadow of the recent Jackson Hole event. |
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