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Jerome Powell
b. 1953 Tier I
A lawyer with no economics degree, running the money for eight years
He grew up in Washington, one of six children of a lawyer in private practice and of Patricia Hayden, whose father had been dean of the law school at Catholic University. Georgetown Prep, then Princeton, where he wrote a senior thesis called South Africa: Forces for Change and took his degree in politics in 1975. He spent a year as a legislative assistant to a Pennsylvania senator, then went to Georgetown Law and edited its law journal. Two years clerking on the Second Circuit and a stint at Davis Polk followed. In 1984 he left the law for investment banking at Dillon, Read. He never took a degree in economics, and he would end up running the institution that sets the price of money.
Nicholas Brady, his old chairman at Dillon Read, became Treasury secretary, and Powell followed him into government in 1990. As under secretary for domestic finance from 1992 he ran the investigation that sanctioned Salomon Brothers for submitting false bids at Treasury auctions, and helped negotiate Warren Buffett into the chairman's seat there. Then private equity: Bankers Trust, partner at the Carlyle Group in 1997, his own firm in 2005. Obama put him on the Federal Reserve Board in 2012, Trump made him chair in 2018 and Biden renominated him in 2021. He opened the emergency lending facilities in March 2020, called the 2021 inflation transitory and later said the word should be retired, then raised the benchmark rate by 5.25 points in 11 increases from March 2022.
The pressure came from one direction and did not stop. Trump called the Fed crazy and loco in 2018, asked advisers in early 2019 whether he could legally fire the chair, and told an outside economist that appointing Powell was one of the worst choices he had made. Powell said in January 2019 that he would not resign if asked. In April 2025 the president posted that Powell's termination could not come fast enough. That July the budget director's office began examining a 2.5 billion dollar renovation of the Fed's headquarters as possible cause for removal, and on January 9, 2026, the Justice Department served the Fed with grand jury subpoenas over his Senate testimony. In March a federal judge quashed them, finding the dominant purpose was to harass and pressure him into yielding or resigning.
His chair term ran out on May 15, 2026. The Board named him chair pro tempore until Kevin Warsh was sworn in on May 22, and then he did what no recent chair has done: he stayed. His governor's term runs to January 31, 2028, and he said plainly that he was staying because of the actions that had been taken, keeping a vote on the rate-setting committee while the questions about the Fed's independence stay open. The Kennedy Library gave him a Profile in Courage Award in 2026. The record is unsettled. The same pandemic response is credited with averting a collapse and blamed for the inflation after it, and economists still argue about the year he waited.
Lifespan
Jerome Powell's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.
Notable works
-
South Africa: Forces for Change
article
His Princeton senior thesis 1975 -
The Salomon Brothers sanctions
other
Run from the Treasury after false bids at government auctions, with Warren Buffett installed as chairman 1992 -
Severn Capital Partners
company
The private equity firm he founded after leaving Carlyle 2005 -
The pandemic emergency lending facilities
other
The credit backstops the Fed opened in March 2020 2020 -
The 2022 to 2023 tightening cycle
other
Eleven increases, 5.25 points, against consumer inflation that peaked at 9.1 percent 2022
Life in brief
with age at each point- 1975 aged ~22 Graduates from Princeton with a thesis on South Africa
- 1979 aged ~26 Takes a law degree at Georgetown, editing the law journal
- 1984 aged ~31 Leaves the law for investment banking at Dillon, Read
- 1992 aged ~39 Becomes under secretary of the Treasury and takes on Salomon Brothers
- May 25, 2012 aged 59 Sworn in as a Federal Reserve governor Nominated by Barack Obama, a Republican filling a Republican seat.
- February 5, 2018 aged 65 Sworn in as chair of the Federal Reserve
- March 17, 2022 aged 69 Begins the rate increases that run to July 2023 Consumer inflation peaked at 9.1 percent that July.
- January 9, 2026 aged 72 The Justice Department serves the Fed with grand jury subpoenas A federal judge quashed them in March, and the department dropped the matter in April.
- May 22, 2026 aged 73 Hands the chairmanship to Kevin Warsh and keeps his Board seat
Related
Contemporaries
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