Los Angeles Times

On interest rates, maybe Trump is right and the Fed is wrong

The battle between President Trump and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell over the Fed's raising of interest rates has been almost universally depicted in Trumpian terms.

On one side, you have a petulant president trying to place the blame for a plunging stock market anywhere but on himself; on the other side, intelligent people trying to ignore him so they can do their jobs.

Treating this as a conflict of personalities is playing the game Trump's way, a trap that the Washington press corps has been trying to wriggle out of for two years, without notable success. In this case, however, the narrative obscures a fundamental truth. Trump's argument that the Fed has been raising short-term interest rates too aggressively is, in fact, backed by

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