JEROME POWELL IS A tRUMP APPOINTEE - AN ATTORNEY, NOT AN ECONOMIST WHO COVERED UP THE GREATEST SCANDAL IN FEDERAL RESERVE HISTORY AND SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN REAPPOINTED. 

Jerome Powell continues to battle the wrong inflation culprit The Fed is hammering average Americans rather than big American corporations Robert Reich Aug 26 Today at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Fed chair Jerome Powell said that the Fed must continue to raise interest rates, even though it will “bring some pain to households and businesses.” This is nuts. True, inflation is near a four-decade high. But the Fed’s aggressive effort to tame it through steep interest rate hikes -- the fastest series of rate hikes since the early 1980s -- is raising the risk of recession. If it raises rates again in September by another three-quarters of a point, which seems likely given Powells remarks today, the risk becomes larger. The pain is already being felt across the land. Most Americans aren’t getting inflation-adjusted wage increases, which means they’re becoming poorer. Meanwhile, corporate profits continue to soar. Profit margins are at their highest since 1950, according to Commerce Department figures published Thursday (See graph below.) In other words, the prices charged by businesses are outpacing the increased costs businesses are facing for production and labor. Which means the biggest single source of inflation in the United States is the pricing power of corporations. The Fed is raising interest rates because, to paraphrase the old saying, when all you have is a hammer everything looks like an interest rate. But this puts most of the burden of fighting inflation on average working people. They’re the ones getting hammered. Why can’t we put the burden where it belongs – on big corporations that continue to raise prices in pursuit of even larger profit margins? Because big corporations have so much political clout that they’d never allow windfall profits taxes or price controls. Not even a Democratic president and Democrats in control of both houses of Congress is able or willing to take on these corporate interests. Remember this the next time your Uncle Bob says the game is rigged against him and other average people, so he’s holding his nose to support a gonzo Republican candidate who promises to take on the “elites.”