Commentary
Jerome Powell came to power at the Fed with the determination to reverse the astounding errors of his predecessors, most especially Ben Bernanke who received the Nobel Prize for the dumbest central-bank policies since the Weimar Republic. Back in 2008, Bernanke pushed borrowing costs for banks to zero and held them there for years on end.
The policy was always absurd. Why can’t interest rates be zero? Because there is such a thing as the passage of time. Consuming in the present with resources stored up by others must always come at some cost. This is true whether money exists or not….