TRUMP SAID CUT OR HE STOPS WORLD TRADE — WARSH RAISED A QUARTER POINT — THE VOTE WAS 12 TO 0 AND POWELL SITS ON THE TWELVE

On September 4 the president posted that the Federal Reserve should “get smart,” that America “should have the LOWEST RATE of any country in the World,” and that he would stop trading with countries the United States runs a deficit with unless the rate came down.

On September 16 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern the committee raised the target range a quarter point, to 3-3/4 to 4 percent. The vote was 12 to 0.

Kevin Warsh is the chairman the president chose. Jerome Powell, the chairman he spent four years attacking, is still a governor and sits on the twelve. Nobody dissented. The statement did not hedge either. It said the move supports a “timelier” return to two percent, which is the committee saying out loud that the old path was too slow, and then it said the committee “will deliver price stability.” Not intends to. Will.

Take the honest reading. A central bank that raises into an open threat against world trade is a central bank with something left in the tank. That is an argument against the simplest version of the bitcoin case, and anyone telling you otherwise today is selling something.

Here is the part that does not go away. The demand was made in public. The threat was trade itself. And at two o'clock neither the debt nor the deficit got any smaller. They won this round twelve to nothing. There are a lot of rounds.