Powell Should Take the Win in the DOJ Probe and Leave Now

President Donald Trump’s Justice Department has finally done the right thing and dropped its unjustified inquiry into the Federal Reserve’s building-renovation cost overruns — an investigation that was clearly meant to pressure Chair Jerome Powell and his colleagues into lowering interest rates. With that threat ending, Powell can leave the central bank and make way for incoming chair Kevin Warsh.

For Powell, there’s no further benefit to sticking around and courting confrontation with the president. Until now, he had pledged to stay on the Fed’s Board of Governors until the DOJ inquiry was “well and truly over,” even after his term as chair ended in May, his way of padding the central bank’s independence. Today, that condition has been met.