Will the Fed Become Trump’s Next Punching Bag?

On What'd You Miss This Week, Joe Weisenthal, Scarlet Fu and Julie Hyman tackled the busy week for the Federal Reserve. President Trump made market moving headlines by saying he "wasn't thrilled" with interest rate hikes in an interview. Peter Conti-Brown, a Fed Historian at the Wharton School, and author of The Power and Independence of the Federal Reserve, came on to talk about this break from precedent. He stressed why the White House commenting on the U.S. central bank's policy choices – even in just a few sentences – was more important than it seemed.

The wall between the White House and the Federal Reserve is a relatively new one. George H.W. Bush was the last President to weigh in on monetary policy — arguing "interest rates should be lower" in his 1991 State of the Union address. As Conti-Brown pointed out, that didn't work out too well for him. The Fed didn't listen, and Bush lost the 1992 election. Conti-Brown said one of the biggest consequences could be the Fed becoming the latest institution to become dogged by partisan politics.