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Jerome Powell off the hook for the ‘Palace of Versailles’ renovation — but he’s still guilty of being a lousy Fed Chair

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Jerome Powell was cleared of criminal wrongdoing in the Fed’s $2.5 billion “Palace of Versailles” headquarters fiasco — but what about the rest of his screwups as head of the nation’s central bank? 

I’m not saying that Powell’s dismal, eight-plus year tenure as Fed chair was criminal in a legal sense, but it was hardly one of success. In fact, it has cost the American people dearly and still does.

It’s a shame all of that was overshadowed by the faux charge over whether he lied to Congress about the cost overruns for the Fed’s HQ renovation, propelled by President Trump’s often irrational disdain for Powell refusing to cut rates. IMHO, Powell should have been ousted for incompetence, plain and simple.

 Again, I’m not taking Trump’s side in the long-running soap opera to fire Powell while the president obsessed about less significant lower short-term rates (it’s the rate on the 10-year Treasury that pegs consumer borrowing that counts and is controlled by the markets). 

That showdown was one of the few bright spots of Powell’s tenure as chair: Even he knew that cutting Fed Funds when the economy was booming would upend confidence in the Fed, stoke already sticky inflation and worsen the price impact of Trump’s tariffs and the Iran conflict.

But that doesn’t come close to exempting Powell from being a bad Fed chair, whether it’s over his opulent new office space or his poor record fighting inflation.

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