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This past week, in the midst of many competing events, the nation’s news-aware and money-savvy cohorts gave their undivided attention to a professorial-looking fellow calmly reading from a piece of paper.
The bespectacled reader was Jerome Powell, who bears a weighty title as chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Bank. While he is unknown to most Americans, his economic power is sometimes said to rival that of the president himself.
And while few voters may be thinking of Powell as they go to the polls in November, all will be coping with economic conditions strongly influenced by Powell’s little-known institution.
The Fed is the latest Washington power center trying to smile for its closeup — caught in the bright glare of contemporary media attention. Like the Supreme Court, which has been barricaded behind new fencing since it overturned the federal protection for abortion rights, the Fed governors have preferred to exercise their extraordinary authority quietly in near anonymity.
The same could be said for top decisionmakers at the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and others responsible for fighting the COVID and monkeypox viruses. Scientists such as Dr. Anthony Fauci have become household names and symbols, praised as saviors and condemned as tyrants.
The curtain has even been drawn back on the Constitution-based oddity known as the Electoral College, an assembly of 535 actual persons who meet at a specified interval every four years and elect the president. Normally a routine exercise noticed by few, the Electoral College has become another focal point in the current congressional investigation of former President Trump’s efforts to stay in office after losing the 2020 election.
That particular investigation has even pierced some of the murkiness of the Secret Service, which cannot account for the loss of critical text messages during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
All these institutions are usually run by individuals who operate with little public notice and speak in the code of their own professional expertise. Each agency has its unwritten protocols — which have minimal oversight and scant public knowledge.
And they have an extraordinary level of authority. While their top officials have been appointed by a president at some point, they all operate with remarkable independence thereafter.
The special case of the Fed
Secretive as many parts of the government may be, there are moments when any may be subject to exposure. This past week, it was showtime for the Fed.
Powell was on TV to read out a number set by…
Read More: The Fed is the latest superpower to emerge from Washington’s shadows : NPR