Last Friday, the Justice Department served the Federal Reserve with grand jury subpoenas related to Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s congressional testimony regarding the Fed’s building renovations.  Powell cried foul, claiming the real target is Fed independence and interest rates.

Whether or not Powell is right about central bank pressure, the fact remains that tension between presidents and the Fed is as old as the idea of a U.S. central bank itself.  Presidents have been battling the Central Bankers since Andrew Jackson killed the Second Bank in 1832. LBJ strong-armed Fed Chair William McChesney Martin at his Texas ranch. Nixon allegedly planted stories about his Fed chair raising his own salary to undermine Arthur Burns. Even Alan Greenspan, the so-called “Maestro,” ignored George H.W. Bush’s pleas for rate cuts—Bush later blamed him for losing the 1992 election.

What is clear is that now Trump is saying out loud, and taking action, on what many presidents clearly believed: The Fed should work with the White House and not against it.

From Talk To Action

Trump has gone further than his predecessors. In August, he fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer after her agency revealed massive downward revisions to jobs data—cutting 258,000 jobs from May and June estimates alone. The Fed uses employment data to determine monetary policy as part of its dual mandate to have stable prices and maximum........

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