The Fed under attack
Marketplace
American Public Media
4.6 • 8K Ratings
🗓️ 12 January 2026
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Department of Justice has opened an investigation into the Federal Reserve and Chair Jerome Powell, a move Powell has since called "an unprecedented action [that] should be seen in the broader context of the [Trump] administration's threats and ongoing pressure" to lower interest rates. We take a closer look at what’s happening from inside the Fed, and look at the implications for the economy as a whole.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What a long, strange trip it has been. |
| 0:06.1 | From American Public Media, this is Marketplace. |
| 0:14.9 | In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Rizzdahl. It is Monday today. This one is the 12th of January. Good as always to have you along, everybody. |
| 0:27.5 | Jay Powell is, first of all, the chairman of the Federal Reserve. We all know that. He is also, though, a lawyer by training, a private equity guy by background, and, and I'll promise this will make |
| 0:39.6 | sense in a minute, a fan of the Grateful Dead, a deadhead, if you will. |
| 0:44.3 | So as we marked the passing this past weekend of the band's guitarist Bob Weir, one of his |
| 0:49.1 | lyrics comes to mind, and this is where Powell and the Dead come together in this moment. What a long, |
| 0:55.5 | strange trip it's been, that lyric goes from the 1970, classic trucking. What a long strange |
| 1:02.0 | trip indeed. The first time I interviewed Jay Powell was the summer of 2018, not long after |
| 1:07.9 | he'd gotten the job. His first broadcast interview, if I might humble brag just a bit. |
| 1:12.1 | And I asked him about something that was even then becoming clear and apparent, the guy who put him in the job, criticizing him personally and often. |
| 1:23.5 | Here's what Powell said. |
| 1:25.0 | Let me just say, I'm not concerned about it, and I'll tell you why. |
| 1:30.1 | We have a long tradition here of conducting policy in a particular way, and that way is independent of all political concerns. |
| 1:41.3 | We do our work in a strictly non-political way based on detailed analysis, |
| 1:47.1 | which we put on the record transparently, and we don't consider political consideration. We don't |
| 1:51.9 | take political considerations into account. I would add, though, that no one in the administration |
| 1:56.8 | has said anything to me that really gives me concern on this front. But this is, this is deep in our |
| 2:02.3 | DNA for, you know, for a long, long time. The Fed has felt it important to conduct our business that way. |
| 2:08.4 | I'm deeply committed to that approach. And so are all of my colleagues here. And here we are, |
| 2:14.1 | just shy of eight years later. And this was part of what Powell said yesterday afternoon |
| 2:19.7 | after being subpoenaed by the Department of Justice and threatened with a criminal investigation. |
... |
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