I'm John Batchel. Joe Sternberg is here, and he's in London, and that's an advantage

because he has

the distance of time. They're ahead of East Coast United States and distance to see the

machinations and unhappiness in the U.S. more clearly. Right now it's about the Federal Reserve

and remarks made by someone attached to the Department of Justice that there is the opening of an investigation into the possible criminal testimony of the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Mr. Powell, is confusing.

However, I go to Joe to understand this word independence. The Fed must be independent is the statement again and again, and Powell must be independent, and this is pressure from the White House. That independence was not permanent, I believe. It's come and gone over the years. Is that a story that

resonates in Europe, in the Bank of England? Are those banks independent? And what does it mean

in Europe compared to what it means in Washington? Yeah, I mean, I think, John, a lot of people

around the world are paying attention to this story, partly because of what it says about the politics of central banking right now, and also partly because the implications on the U.S. economy in American financial markets and bond yields and the rest of it are so huge. This fiasco is unavoidable. I mean, you describe the situation as complicated, John.

I would add it is stupid and complicated, because what we're talking about here is a huge

kerfuffle last summer about cost overruns on a renovation the Fed is doing on its office

buildings in Washington.

And the big picture here is that President Trump is exasperated with Jerome Powell

because the Fed has not cut interest rates as quickly or as deeply as Trump wants them to.

And Powell also has warned that some of Trump's tariffs might turn out to be inflationary.

And so Powell says that's something the Fed is watching.

So Trump has been gunning for Powell for a long time, and the mechanism that they've settled on is a quote-unquote investigation into whether some testimony that Powell gave about this office building may have

been untrue in a way that would expose him to allegations of perjury.

I mean, it's hard to tell what they're looking for.

And if listeners are confused, there's a reason for that.

This does not make an awful lot of sense.

It is clearly a pretext to try to exert influence over the Fed bully Powell into doing what Trump wants him to do or create some pretext for cashiering Powell before his term as chairman of the Fed runs out in May so that Trump could nominate someone else. And I think that to the

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