Trillion Dollar Triage: How Jay Powell and the Fed Battled a President and a Pandemic---and Prevented Economic Disaster
by Nick Timiraos
View on GoodreadsWSJ Fed reporter Nick Timiraos's narrative of Jay Powell's Federal Reserve response to the COVID economic shock — the emergency lending facilities, the unprecedented expansion of the balance sheet, and the political pressure from Trump throughout.
Core ideas
- The March 2020 financial system response was historically large and historically fast — Powell's team activated nearly every tool from the 2008 playbook and invented several new ones within weeks, preventing what would have been a depression-grade liquidity collapse.
- The political pressure from Trump on Powell was constant and direct; Powell's institutional posture — Fed independence as load-bearing — held through the period, but the precedent of public presidential pressure on monetary policy remains.
- The book's quieter argument is that 2020 success became 2022 inflation — the unprecedented stimulus, including fiscal, did the immediate job and produced the subsequent problem, and the two halves can't be assessed separately.
Published2022
Pages352
ISBN9780316272810
ReadJun 2024
