Subject: A Better Reason to Fire Powell
Everyone is arguing about cost overruns on the Fed building. That's not the real scandal.
The real scandal is that Powell even started spending this renovation money at all.
The Fed began this $2.5 billion palace for bureaucrats in mid-2022. By September 2022 the Federal Reserve System was hemorrhaging cash - losing almost $1 billion a week for three years.
$114.3 billion lost in 2023. $77.6 billion lost in 2024. $18.7 billion lost in 2025. Over $233 billion in cumulative losses.
No American family would renovate their house after losing their job. No businessman would build a new plant while his company was going broke. He would stop, conserve cash, survive.
Only Powell would keep building a more comfortable office for Washington bureaucrats while his own institution was bleeding taxpayer cash.
The issue isn't the cost overruns. The issue is a complete lack of basic financial understanding. Chair Powell did not have the competence to manage major construction and this calls into question his ability to make basic financial decisions.
If a CEO did this, his board would fire him.
The judgement to keep spending billions on renovations while running a money losing hedge fund disguised as a Central Bank is why Powell should never have been managing our nation's finances.
It is becoming more difficult . 3% is the new 2% according to many prominent economists and Wall Street inflation-lovers. I repeat my admiration for President US Grant . He restored the dollar to the pre-Civil War gold conversion rate of $20.67 and ended the bi-metallic standard of the early Republic. At a time when democrat William Jennings Bryan used an anti-Semitic chant to denounce a hard currency . The man from the prairies of Galena Illinois inherited government debt equal to 1/3 of GDP and exited with currency as good as a gold.
Great luncheon speech by President Javier Milei at my Economic Club of New York . His agenda of more capitalism and less government is raising living standards . His clarion remarks are like those of Moses - leading the people of the west to the Promised Land of freedom and opportunity . Manalapan’s Peter Lamelas is our Ambassador.
Outstanding performance last evening of Bach’s 30 Goldberg Variations adapted for a duet of accordions by Pietro Roffi. He performed along with the world’s greatest Classical accordionist Ksenija Sidorova at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival at the Meldorf Dom.
Francisco , your background in the non-profit and think tank world colors your commentary . My career has been 100% in the FOR profit capitalist part of the economy . And the two things that set my heart ablaze : 1) he is not a lawyer but is a business guy and 2) he started his career as a credit guy in a financial institution , and earned 4 promotions in 5 years. Everyone in financial services respects that training.