Bank of America CEO Warns Against Trump Politicizing the Fed: ‘The Market Will Punish’ Us

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan sat down with Face the Nation’s Margert Brennan to discuss the current state of the U.S. economy and took a swipe at President Donald Trump’s posturing that the Federal Reserve should do his bidding.

“The President has announced that he wants all these sweeping changes to the Federal Reserve. Chair Powell is set to retire from the job in May. How much does that job matter to the consumer? How do you explain that?” Brennan asked Moynihan over the weekend.

“Well, it’s one of the interesting things. So the President’s going to appoint a new chair of the Federal Reserve. He’s got great candidates. He’ll appoint somebody, and we’ll help that candidate get the information, be successful. And so we’ll see what he does,” Moynihan replied, adding:

But that’s his prerogative. He should do it. In my mind, there’s too much fascination with the Fed. We’re a country that’s driven by the private sector—what people do in the businesses and the companies, small companies and large companies, medium-sized companies, and entrepreneurs and doctors and lawyers. All these people drive our economy. The idea that we are hanging on a thread by the Fed moving rates 25 basis points—it seems to me we’ve gotten out of whack.

And so we’ve gotta get—since the financial crisis, the Fed had a big role in stabilizing the economy. That’s what they’re supposed to do. That went away a number of years ago. It came back a little bit in COVID. They’re a lender of last resort. They’re there to stabilize markets and prices. But other than that, you shouldn’t know they exist, quite frankly.

“So you don’t worry about all this hand-wringing of political interference with the Fed once that new position is–” Brennan pressed, referring to Trump’s repeated attacks on Powell for not following Trump’s calls to lower interest rates faster.

“The market will punish people if we don’t have an independent Fed, and everybody knows that,” Moynihan replied bluntly.

Watch the clip above via CBS.