Why is the US President meeting with the head of the Federal Reserve Bank?   What does this say about the Fed’s political independence?

Two expedited, closed meetings in a row accompanied by a meeting with the president and vice president in between, which the White House, itself, associated with these closed-door meetings, that is so rare it required special White House defense as to what would not be happening in the president’s meeting between these two sessions.

The first meeting was nominally to talk about setting interest rates, which the FOMC will be meeting to consider again later this month, having just postponed their scheduled increase in March.

The fact that it is a bank supervisory matter makes it sound like a particular concern, not a general discussion about supervisory policy. Something is the matter somewhere that requires an immediate meeting right after another immediate meeting … behind closed doors.

This all comes very close to sounding like some bank somewhere is in trouble, and the trouble is big enough to call a special meeting of the very august board of governors right after they just had a special meeting.

Why so many last-minute meetings behind closed doors and with the president and vice president at a time when all major central bank heads in the world will be meeting with finance ministers in Washington, DC. Here are some hot issues going on this same week.

Has a recession already begun as the  Atlanta Fed revises US GDP down again.

The president’s meeting with the Fed and the Fed’s two meetings were all called right after the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank revised the revisions of its previous revisements to say the US economy now looks like it will report in for the first quarter at 0.1% growth.

The last number is within a rounding error of going negative and is less then the margin of error for their data. It was only back in February that the Fed anticipated a cruising speed of 2% growth for GDP in the first quarter. They have revised that number down almost every week.

Of course, the fact that the Fed and the President called an unscheduled, closed-door meeting to include the VP does not mean there is any connection between the events.  The independence of the Fed is at stake.  Who has imagined, since 2008, that the US Fed is independent?

The President has been acting outside the bounds of propriety in the last month.  He endorsed the highly unpopular head of the Democratic party in her re-election race.  The head, Debbie Wasserman Schulz has twisted the party mechanisms to favor Mrs. Clinton.  The President then went on national television and climbed the Chinese wall separating his executive office from the FBI and other agnecies investigating Mrs. Clinton’s use not only of an email system located on the Clinton Foundation server, but a server that also hosted the emails of Mrs. Clinton’s husband and daughter. Unseemly at the very least.  Not an investigation about which the President should have any comments at all.  What is the President up to?