A bad bet by U.S. Supreme Court?

A recent decision tried to protect the Fed from the president’s interference. It didn’t go nearly far enough.

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Excerpt from first link above: "On Monday evening, President Donald Trump opened up a new front in his campaign to take control of the Federal Reserve. He released a letter on social media purporting to fire Lisa Cook, a Joe Biden–appointed member of the Fed’s seven-person board of governors. The letter is part of what appears to be a coordinated effort by the administration to fill a majority of the board with loyalists. It is also a consequence of the Supreme Court’s willingness to throw out bedrock precedent and accept broad assertions of presidential power.

The Court has created the conditions for a very dangerous situation: If the justices allow Trump’s removal of Cook to take effect, there will be little to stop him from driving other board members from their posts, and seizing power over the money supply.

The Federal Reserve is one of the few holdouts in Trump’s assault on American institutions. Capturing it would provide the president with a big prize. Established by Congress to promote economic expansion, the Fed primarily oversees the country’s banks. To that end, it can create cash out of thin air. Although Congress designed the Fed to use this power in limited ways, beginning in the 1950s, the Fed has repeatedly deployed its “printing press” to reshape the financial system. And since the 2008 financial crisis, the Fed’s reach has grown considerably, with the central bank providing extensive ad hoc support to select financial firms, especially during periods of instability.

Conventional wisdom has been that, given the dangers of putting an infinitely extensible balance sheet under the control of a single person, the Fed will survive Trump’s onslaught. Although the Fed’s board is not wholly independent of the president—its members are selected by him—the president is not legally permitted under the Federal Reserve Act to remove board members at will or direct how they carry out their duties. The law authorizes the president to remove board members only for cause.