IMF Lagarde Defends Fed Chair on Monetary Policy

The head of the International Monetary Fund on Thursday defended Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell one day after U.S. President Donald Trump criticized the American central bank, which has been raising U.S. interest rates, as “crazy.”

“I wouldn’t associate Jay Powell with craziness,” Managing Director Christine Lagarde told CNBC in an interview. “He comes across – and members of his board – as extremely serious, solid and certainly keen to base their decisions on actual information.”

Trump made the comment in response to Wall Street’s sell-off after the S&P 500 and the Dow marked their worst losses in eight months. The slump triggered a surge of global selling that sent European stocks to a more than an 18-month low on Thursday and knocked down Asian shares.

Worries about higher borrowing costs have sparked the U.S. stock sales in recent days, while a spike in U.S. Treasury yields and solid U.S. economic data have raised concerns that the Fed may pick up the pace of its interest rate hikes.

via Reuters

Content is for general information purposes only. It is not investment advice or a solution to buy or sell securities. Opinions are the authors; not necessarily that of OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc. or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, officers or directors. If you would like to reproduce or redistribute any of the content found on MarketPulse, an award winning forex, commodities and global indices analysis and news site service produced by OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc., please access the RSS feed or contact us at info@marketpulse.com. Visit https://www.marketpulse.com/ to find out more about the beat of the global markets. © 2023 OANDA Business Information & Services Inc.