Federal Reserve’s systemic power grows as political violence escalates: Powell’s quiet tenure masks structural fragility in US governance
Original framing: “Powell vows to keep ‘low profile’ as Fed governor” — Financial Times
The Fed’s origins in 1913 were tied to suppressing labor unrest and racial justice movements, with early interventions often aligning with corporate interests against working-class organizing. The 1970s-80s shift to neoliberalism saw central banks weaponized against Keynesian policies, using inflation targeting to discipline social spending and labor rights. Historical parallels abound in post-WWII Latin America, where IMF/World Bank policies (often enabled by central banks) fueled coups and authoritarianism under the guise of economic stabilization.
The Fed’s ‘low profile’ under Powell is a misdirection: its policies actively shape the conditions for political violence by entrenching inequality, suppressing dissent, and prioritizing financial stability over democratic resilience.
This is not an accident but a feature of neoliberal governance, where central banks act as shock absorbers for capital while crises are framed as exogenous shocks. The Fed’s power is global, enforcing austerity from Detroit to Buenos Aires, yet its legitimacy rests on the myth of technocratic neutrality—a myth Indigenous, Black, and Global South communities have long exposed as violence disguised as expertise. The solution pathways must therefore invert this power structure: democratizing monetary policy, decolonizing its epistemology, and dismantling the dollar’s extractive dominance. Without these, the Fed will remain both the architect and the alibi for the crises it claims to mitigate, while the trickster’s laughter echoes in the marble halls of its Washington headquarters.