If the stock market is down or bad economic data prints, one can always assume President Trump will make time out of his day to bash the Federal Reserve on Twitter.
President Trump's Fed bashing, sometimes a daily occurrence, if not at least several times a week, has irritated incoming European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde, who says in an upcoming 60 Minutes interview, expected to air on Sunday, Oct. 20 at 7 p.m. ET/PT on CBS, that "Market stability should not be the subject of a tweet here or a tweet there. It requires consideration, thinking, quiet and measured, and rational decisions."
Lagarde told 60 Minutes correspondent John Dickerson that central banking is like "navigating a plane" with policymakers keeping a very close eye on the instrument panel, i.e., economic trends.
Dickerson asks Lagarde if it's okay if a leader [refering to President Trump] was actively criticizing a central bank head in public. Dickerson pulled a quote from President Trump's Sept. 11 tweet, where he called Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell a "bonehead" for not cutting "interest rates down to ZERO."
....The USA should always be paying the the lowest rate. No Inflation! It is only the naïveté of Jay Powell and the Federal Reserve that doesn’t allow us to do what other countries are already doing. A once in a lifetime opportunity that we are missing because of “Boneheads.”
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 11, 2019
Lagarde responds by saying, "a central bank governor does best his job if he is independent."
According to CBS, the interview took place last month at Lagarde's home in Normandy and the IMF headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Lagarde also criticized President Trump's Twitter practices as a whole and his trade war with China that has sent the global economy into one of its most vulnerable periods since the last financial crisis.
She said world leaders need to find a resolution to trade disputes: "My very, very strong message to all policymakers is please sit down like big men, many men in those rooms and put everything on the table, and try to deal bit by bit, piece by piece, so that we have certainty."
Lagarde will replace outgoing ECB Chief Mario Draghi on Nov. 01. She's entering the position as Europe's manufacturing complex is sliding into a technical recession along with the rest of the world.
Lagarde calling out President Trump in an upcoming 60-Minutes interview indicates that central bankers across the world are panicking to control an economic narrative that they have lost thanks to President Trump's tweeting.
60-Minutes has an average viewership of 8 million Americans, which means central banks, led by the upcoming Lagarde interview, want to convince as many people as possible that President Trump is wrong for criticizing...