Trump drops maverick habits with safe Fed pick
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Trump drops maverick habits with safe Fed pick

PA- Trump and Powell

US President Donald Trump doesn’t normally stick to playing it safe. But by picking Jerome Powell to lead the Federal Reserve he has got the closest thing to Janet Yellen without having to reappoint the incumbent Fed chair to a second term.

Powell is a Federal Reserve veteran who is, by all accounts, a mild-mannered consensus builder, with a track record of voting in line with the rest of the Federal Open Markets Committee on interest rates.

For those who feared a Fed remade in Trump’s own iconoclastic image, Powell looks like a safe pair of hands who will likely do little to rock the boat.

Don't tell Trump, but it is a pick that his predecessor in the Oval Office, Barack Obama, might have made, and shows that for all the president’s talk of transforming America, the health of financial markets is the most important item on his agenda.

In the medium term, Powell should have little problem finding agreement with his fellow FOMC members on gradual monetary normalisation, which was the dictum of the Federal Reserve under Yellen.

But markets should beware the similarities between Trump’s nominee and Yellen.

Powell is believed to share Yellen’s penchant for combating inflation and, as a lawyer by background not an economist, will likely lean heavily on the Fed staff for advice. This could lead to Powell’s Fed being more hawkish than markets are pricing in, if inflation reappears.

But for now the US bull market is set to keep on running and Trump is strapped on for the ride.  

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