With leaked trades in their personal accounts already costing two Fed presidents their jobs, and a third – vice chair Richard Clarida – currently on the ropes amid speculation he will soon follow, a few weeks ago we joked that if forces within the Fed want to get rid of all the hawks, they should just leak Esther George’s – the Fed’s last remaining uberhawk – trading record.
To be honest, not even we expected that the progressive American Prospect magazine (initially called The Liberal Prospect), the domain of such ultra-leftists/socialists as Robert Reich, Robert Kuttner, and Paul Starr, and whose interns include Bernie Sanders advisor Matt Duss, Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias, would try to kill Powell’s candidacy by leaking his trades in hopes of getting the Fed’s resident socialist, Lael Brainard, to replace Powell amid the growing storm over Fed trades.