Fed Must Cut Reserve Rates Now

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell Getty Images The Federal Reserve’s policy committee gathers this week amid an economy that has lost the spring in its step. After a brisk start to the year, growth is wobbling as businesses and investors hold their breath over President Trump’s new tariff salvos and the uncertain tax landscape. Markets still assume Washington will ink trade deals during the administration’s self-imposed 90-day suspension—an optimism that also counts on Beijing’s beleaguered leadership to keep its powder dry on Taiwan and focus on patching the holes in China’s own sinking ship. Meanwhile, business decisions are freezing up because nobody knows what the rules of the game will look like next quarter, let alone next year. The last thing America needs is a central bank chained by hubris to a flawed model. Yet that is precisely where the Fed sits. Its operating premise—that prosperity breeds inflation—gets the causality exactly wrong. From that faulty assumption flows a second delusion: that tamping down growth is the way to cure rising prices. The reality is simpler. Some price spikes come from tariffs, taxes, or pandemic-style production shocks. Others come from a shrinking dollar. The former are out of the Fed’s reach; the latter are its core responsibility. The recent surge in gold—history’s most reliable inflation bellwether—warns that the greenback is already sliding. Recall the jump in gold during 2019; it foreshadowed the inflation that slammed households after the COVID spending binge. What Should The Fed Do? 1. Slash, Loudly And Immediately The 4.40% the Fed pays banks on the reserves they warehouse in Fed vaults needs to slashed. Cut it in half. Then make it crystal-clear that banks will not be second-guessed for putting that money to work in loans. Liquidity, not hand-wringing, is what will keep a shaky world from cascading into disorderly defaults. Critics will gasp that easier money risks monetary inflation. They forget that the dollar’s weakness is a separate—and fixable—problem. The Fed must jettison its prosperity-causes-inflation superstition and commit, in plain English, to a stable dollar. Gold is the yardstick. To underscore the point, the Board should urge Treasury Secretary Bessent to float a tranche of gold-backed bonds—a concrete demonstration that this administration wants a dollar as good as gold, not a currency that drifts with political breezes. 2. End The Fed’s Versailles-On-The-Mall Renovation The New York Post recently revealed a $2.5 billion headquarters overhaul—already $600 million over budget—that includes a private elevator bank whizzing grandees to an executive dining room. Nothing better illustrates institutional hubris than gilding the Fed’s own palace while Main Street feels the pinch. Scrap the extravagance and train every institutional brain cell on defending a sound currency. Cutting the bank reserve interest rate in half, coupled with a resolute gold standard for the dollar, would stop inflation in its tracks, free the banking system to grease commerce, and send an overdue signal that the Federal Reserve finally understands its purpose. The economy—and the world—cannot afford anything less. Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2025/05/07/rising-gold-warns-markets-fed-must-cut-reserve-rates-now/