Jerome Powell's Critics Fail to See the Big Picture

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell ends his tenure atop the world’s most powerful central bank with his legacy mostly cemented. Having faced an unprecedented series of policy crises, he walks away with a not-unblemished score card, but one he can nonetheless celebrate as he hands off leadership to successor Kevin Warsh on Friday.

Powell kept financial markets from seizing up in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. He was too slow to react to the worst consumer-price surge in four decades, but made up for it by adroitly engineering a disinflation campaign without triggering widespread unemployment — a feat few thought was possible. And he did it all while parrying the worst threats to the institution’s independence since Richard Nixon.