Jason Furman

Firing Fed chair Jay Powell will not end the Fed's independence overnight. The Fed was designed to resist short-run political pressures, but it may be defenseless against a sustained effort over the course of two presidential terms, @jasonfurman explains: nyti.ms/3TLkPR5

Firing Fed chair Jay Powell will not end the Fed's independence overnight. The Fed was designed to resist short-run political pressures, but it may be defenseless against a sustained effort over the course of two presidential terms, @jasonfurman explains: nyti.ms/3TLkPR5

My NYT opinion on the threat to the Fed. I argue it has powerful short-run protections (including interest rates set by a 12 person committee). But it's largely defenseless against a sustained assault by two Presidents in a row. nytimes.com/2025/07/17/opi…

Excellent commentary on the short and medium run risks surrounding Fed independence, from @jasonfurman.

New working paper with @Pat_Horan92 where we provide a new decomposition of the inflation surge. Using a New Keynesian model, we show most of the inflation was caused by aggregate demand shocks. We also do a @jasonfurman decomposition with similar results (1/3) @JohnHCochrane

Another great discussion with @DKThomp on where we are in the macroeconomy, centered around the question: "If Trump's Economic Ideas Are So Bad, Why Isn't the Economy Worse?"

The CPI-based Ecumenical Underlying Inflation Measure was 2.3% in June, up from 2.0% last month. Is the median of 7 different measures of inflation over 3, 6 and 12 months--all benchmarked to match the PCE (on average, lately PCE running higher). Expect this to keep rising.

It is to the credit of the first Trump administration that they resisted this idea. I hope they do again for all of the policy and legal reasons @davidckamin outlines here.

Quite the full political spectrum of economists joining in this amicus brief opposing Trump's use of IEEPA for across the board tariffs. Progressives, conservatives, libertarians, neoliberals, CEA chairs from Bush, Obama .... aei.org/articles/amicu…

27 prominent economists come out swinging in US court against Trump's "emergency" tariffs. They (rightly) say: -Trade deficits aren't "unusual or extraordinary" or a "threat" to the US -Tariffs won't meaningfully reduce trade deficits but will have other major economic effects

President Trump's focus on a Fed Chair who will slash rates is misguided even on his own terms: 1 The Fed Chair is 1 of 12 votes, a political hack Chair won't get majority 2 Even if FFR slashed the rates people care about, like mortgage, could go up w/ higher expected inflation