Commentary Pity Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell. He faces a vastly different economic tableau in what will be his second term than he did for most of his first term. The policy options to fulfill the Fed’s dual mandates—maintaining price stability and full employment—are more at odds now than they have been at any time since the 1980s. Powell took the helm of the central bank in 2017, when interest rates were recovering from historically low levels, the near Zero Interest Rate Policy, or “ZIRP,” that had been implemented by his predecessor, Ben Bernanke, amid the 2008 financial crisis. As the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus, spiked rates and nearly seized up the commercial paper markets in March 2020, Powell implemented the Fed’s Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility (SMCCF), by which the Fed bought bonds and ETFs, and implemented other measures to maintain liquidity. …