In a decision that sent shivers of schadenfreude through the City of London and no doubt induced a spectacular gin-and-tonic induced nosebleed chez Biff, the Supreme Court today told Donald Trump that he cannot simply sack Federal Reserve chairs like a petulant restaurant owner firing a sous-chef for overcooking the béarnaise. The ruling, delivered with the gravitas of a headmaster expelling a particularly tiresome prefect, blocks the president’s attempt to unseat Fed Chair Jerome Powell, a man whose stoicism in the face of tweeting has become the stuff of legend.
UK investors, my dear readers, have reacted with the sort of relieved ecstasy usually reserved for discovering that the last seat on a packed Tube train is actually a spacious throne made of pure Tarmac. The pound sterling did a little jig, the FTSE 100 rose like a soufflé in a distracted baker’s oven, and the word ‘stability’ was whispered in hushed tones across the trading floors of Canary Wharf, as if it were a forbidden name. Indeed, the very notion that the world’s most powerful economy might be governed by something other than late-night tweetstorms and golf course epiphanies has sent a collective sigh of relief across the Atlantic.
The case, for those of you who have been living under a rock – or perhaps just avoiding the relentless braying of the 24-hour news cycle – revolved around whether the president possesses the absolute authority to dismiss the head of the Fed without cause. The Supreme Court, in its infinite wisdom and with a side order of constitutional corsetry, decided that no, he does not. This, of course, has enraged the man from Mar-a-Lago, who immediately took to Truth Social to describe the decision as ‘a witch hunt cooked up by swamp monsters and communist judges’, a sentence that had linguists scratching their heads and comedy writers weeping with jealousy.
But let us consider the implications for the blighty-based investor, that noble creature who navigates the treacherous waters of global finance with a stiff upper lip and a diversified portfolio. The spectre of a politicised Fed, one that might slash rates or print money at the whims of a chest-thumping populist, has been exorcised. No longer must they wake in a cold sweat, haunted by visions of the dollar collapsing into a puddle of orange-tinged irrelevance. Instead, they can return to their traditional worries: Brexit, the weather, and the shocking price of a pint in Zone 1.
From this scribbler’s perch, perched precariously atop a barstool in a Soho drinking establishment that shall remain nameless (though it rhymes with ‘The French House’), I raise a glass to the justices. They have done what many thought impossible: they have introduced a modicum of sanity into a political landscape that resembles a Salvador Dalí painting after a particularly heavy night on the absinthe. The Fed, that bastion of boring bankers and unreadable charts, remains independent. For now, at least, the world’s financial linchpin will not be turned into a plaything for an orange-tinted CBeebies presenter.
Of course, the Trump campaign has vowed to appeal. They will fight this decision with every breath in their over-tanned bodies, no doubt calling the justices ‘fools’, ‘lightweights’, and – worst of all – ‘unfriendly’. But for today, the forces of reason have triumphed. UK investors can sleep easy, safe in the knowledge that their pension funds will not be the victims of a mid-afternoon tweet. And as I order another – the barman knows my poison – I ponder the delicate dance of democracy and dollar signs. It is a dance that, for once, has not ended in a faceplant on the dance floor of economic disaster.
Biff out. The gin is calling.
