A Phil Hall Op-Ed: Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has been called many things – including some names that are not appropriate to repeat in polite company – but this Wednesday he might be called something quite unexpected: Person of the Year.
Time Magazine identified Powell as one of nine finalists for its 2023 edition of the Person of the Year honors. Powell is the only federal government official under consideration by Time, which is also toying with the idea of bestowing Person of the Year on the Hollywood writers and actors that went on strike this year, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Taylor Swift, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the prosecutors targeting former President Donald Trump, the movie “Barbie,” Russian President Vladimir Putin, and King Charles III.
Well, it’s not every day that the Federal Reserve leader is mentioned in the same sentence as Taylor Swift and “Barbie” – let alone with Xi and Putin. And while he hasn’t broken concert attendance records or threatened to invade Taiwan, Powell wound up in this stellar company because Time editors pegged him for shaping American financial policy.
“Jerome Powell, who has been Chairman of the Federal Reserve since February 2018, has played a key role managing high inflation in the U.S., trying to architect the so-called ‘soft landing’ of reducing inflation by raising interest rates without causing a recession—a goal felt in the wallets of Americans and economies across the world,” said the Time editors in announcing their shortlist of candidates, adding that Powell “has been on the TIME100 list twice (in 2019 and 2020).”
But not everyone is enamored with Powell. Lest we forget, this was the same Fed chief who blithely insisted the rise of inflation in 2021 was “transitory.” Powell’s wrong call on inflation damaged the economy – Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said it best when he remarked, “The Fed was ad-libbing, scrambling to catch up to the painfully higher inflation. The Fed doesn’t have a script and is kind of making it up as it goes here.”
Powell has also been blamed by many for creating a regulatory environment that led to the banking crisis earlier this year. Massachusetts’ Sen. Elizabeth Warren said of Powell, “He has had two jobs – one is to deal with monetary policy, one is to deal with regulation. He has failed at both.”
Nor does Powell have many fans on the right. None of the candidates for the GOP presidential nomination agreed to renominate him in 2026, and Florida’s Sen. Rick Scott was equally caustic, stating, “He’s done a horrible job. So when you go buy gas, and when you to the grocery and pay the rent, you can thank Jay Powell … for this ridiculously high inflation.”
We’ll find out on Wednesday if Powell is Time’s Person of the Year for 2023. IMHO, I suspect Taylor Swift will get the honors. After all, Time is in the business of selling magazines, and who do you think will be more popular with readers: the superstar who can do no wrong or the central banker who can do no right?
