. . .

As University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers told the BBC Sunday night, pressuring a central bank to lower interest rates without justification is “a thing that tin pot dictators do right before starting a hyperinflation and destroying their own economies.” Wolfers listed several other countries where political leaders applied similar pressure to central bank leaders, including Venezuela, Russia, and Zimbabwe.

And, for what it is worth, the Supreme Court has signalled pretty clearly that it does not want a repeat of 1972. While the Court’s Republican majority normally believes that Trump should be allowed to fire any leader of a federal agency for any reason, they wrote last May that the Fed has a “distinct historical tradition” that should protect it from presidential control.

But, if the Court’s Republicans are troubled by Trump’s attacks on Jerome Powell, they have no one to blame but themselves. In Trump v. United States (2024), the infamous Trump immunity decision, the Republican justices did not merely conclude that Trump is allowed to use the powers of the presidency to commit crimes. They also said that Trump may order the Justice Department to target someone “for an improper purpose.”