Federal Reserve Shouldn’t Take the Political Bait: Claudia Sahm

President Donald Trump’s attempt to remove Lisa Cook as a governor of the Federal Reserve is a brazen escalation of the administration’s long-running pressure campaign on the central bank. It is also a frontal assault on the Fed’s independence — and the question is how the Fed can take action to shield itself from political influence.

The Fed can start by being more specific about what independence means. Without invoking the term, Chair Jerome Powell provided a good working definition in his speech at Jackson Hole last week: Members of the Federal Open Market Committee make decisions about monetary policy “based ...