You must know it’s bleak when someone who has called you a “dangerous man” is coming to your defense.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, pulled no punches in September 2021, when she declared she would not vote for Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s renomination.

“Renominating you means gambling that, for the next five years, a Republican majority at the Federal Reserve, with a Republican chair who has regularly voted to deregulate Wall Street, won’t drive this economy over a financial cliff,” Warren said during a hearing at which Powell was testifying.

A day earlier, two of the Fed’s regional bank chiefs — Eric Rosengren in Boston and Robert Kaplan in Dallas — resigned amid news that they traded stocks in 2020 while also helping to set monetary policy. 

“So far you’ve been lucky,” Warren told Powell at the time. “But the 2008 crash shows what happens when the luck runs out.”

Warren on Sunday wrote to Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte, chastising him for his unabashed push to oust Powell from his post.

“America is in the midst of a housing crisis. … Yet, in recent weeks, you appear to have become distracted from your statutory mission,” Warren wrote. “Instead, you appear to have been primarily focused on convincing President [Donald] Trump to illegally fire Jerome Powell.”

Pulte posted or reposted 114 times on X about Powell in the first 20 days of July, Warren noted in her letter. He also is reported to have given Trump a draft of a letter to fire Powell last week, she added.

“While you focus on your social media activities, housing remains unaffordable for a growing number of Americans,” Warren wrote. “House prices are up 3 percent over last year and up nearly 50 percent since President Trump's first term in 2020.

“Your job is to manage FHFA, oversee our nation’s mortgage market, and lower costs for American families – full stop,” she added. “Your prolific activity on X and apparent decision to take time away from your duties as FHFA Director to draft a letter for President Trump to fire Chair Powell are abnormal.”

Warren asked Pulte to tell her by July 31 how much time per day he spends, on average, “posting on, scrolling or otherwise consuming social media content during the workday” – further asking for a breakdown of averages per social media platform.

Conversely, Warren asked Pulte how many hours per business day since June 19 he has “spent executing on tasks directly associated with [his] role as Director of FHFA.”

“During your nomination process, I raised concerns about your excessive and unusual use of social media, and how that reflected on your temperament and fitness to serve,” Warren wrote. “It now appears that my concerns were prescient.”

Warren also asked whether Pulte drafted or provided to Trump or other members of his administration a letter to fire Powell.

“Your behavior raises significant questions about your judgment and commitment to operating FHFA in a responsible, competent and lawful manner,” Warren wrote.

For Warren, perhaps Powell represents the (for lack of a better term) devil she knows.

Updates from the Fed, Bessent

As its figurehead remains under scrutiny by Trump-aligned officials, the Fed added a six-minute video Monday to the frequently asked questions section of its website, showing the status of construction at the two sites embroiled in controversy from a $2.5 billion renovation.

The video shows the removal of asbestos caulking, the installation of blast-resistant windows, the site of the oft-maligned vegetative roofs – and it takes care to note the building of a parking lot to specifications discussed with the National Capital Planning Commission, a panel that Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought vowed to loop into the renovation’s progress.

The video was posted on a day when Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in an appearance on CNBC, called for an “examin[ation of] the entire Federal Reserve institution and whether they have been successful.”

“It is my belief that the central bank should conduct an exhaustive internal review of its non-monetary policy operations,” Bessent continued off-air in a post on X. “Significant mission creep and institutional growth have taken the Fed into areas that potentially jeopardize the independence of its core monetary policy mission.”

Bessent called the Fed’s monetary policy a “jewel box that should be walled off to preserve its independence.”

The Fed’s non-monetary policy dealings, however, are “provoking justifiable criticism that unnecessarily casts a cloud over the Fed’s valuable independence,” Bessent wrote Monday. “While I have no knowledge or opinion on the legal basis for the massive building renovations being undertaken on Constitution Avenue, a review of the decision to undertake such a project by an institution reporting operating losses of more than $100 billion per year should be conducted.”

Bessent expounded on his opinion in an appearance Tuesday on Fox Business.

The Fed’s non-monetary policy mission, he said, “has just grown and grown and grown, and this is what happens when you don’t have oversight.”

“I know Chair Powell. There’s nothing that tells me that he should step down right now. He’s been a good public servant,” Bessent said. “His term ends in May. If he wants to see that through, I think he should. If he wants to leave early, I think he should.”

If Powell were to lead an internal review, it would be “a real chance here for him, for his legacy, to be that he right-sized the non-monetary policy functions of the Fed,” Bessent said.

DOJ referral and a boost from Yellen

Not every Trump-aligned official is giving Powell as much grace. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-FL, followed through on her promise last week to “criminally [refer] Jerome Powell to the [Justice Department] to investigate perjury regarding his crazy $2.5BN building.”

Luna wrote Attorney General Pam Bondi on Saturday, accusing Powell of lying twice during June testimony about details of the Fed’s restoration project, and asked the DOJ to investigate.

Powell’s assertion that “there’s no VIP dining room, there’s no new marble … no special elevators … no new water features [and] no roof terrace gardens” is contradicted by the project’s plans, Luna said.

Further, Powell’s statement that the Fed’s Eccles Building “had never really had … a serious renovation” is false, Luna said, because the central bank’s board “conducted a comprehensive renovation” of the space from 1999 to 2003, including “the replacement of the roof, all major systems and a full refurbishing of interior and courtyard spaces.”

“These are not minor misstatements,” Luna said Monday in a press release. “Chairman Powell knowingly misled both Congress and executive branch officials about the true nature of a taxpayer-funded project. Lying under oath is a serious offense — especially from someone tasked with overseeing our monetary system and public trust.”

Two past Fed chairs, however, also came to Powell’s defense Monday.

In an op-ed printed in The New York Times, Janet Yellen and Ben Bernanke wrote that Trump’s “demands for a radical reduction in interest rates and his threats to fire its chair … undermine not only Mr. Powell but also all future chairs and, indeed, the credibility of the central bank.”

“Independence means that monetary policymakers are permitted to use fact-based analysis and their best professional judgment in determining how best to reach their mandated goals, without regard to short-term political pressures,” Yellen and Bernanke wrote.

It should be noted, too, that Yellen and Bernanke were nominated to Fed leadership roles by Democratic presidents, while Powell is a Republican.

“President Trump, like all Americans, is entitled to express his views on monetary policy,” the past chairs wrote. “He will have a chance to put his stamp on the Federal Reserve by nominating someone to succeed Mr. Powell when his term ends next spring.”

Yellen and Bernanke urged Trump to pick a nominee “who will keep an appropriate distance between the Fed and short-term politics.”

“The Fed’s credibility … is hard to acquire and easy to lose,” they wrote.