Jerome Powell: The Most Powerful Person You've Never Heard Of

Why this matters

The person who cut interest rates from 1.50 percent to 0.25 percent in twelve days in March 2020, touching nearly every loan in the country, is someone most students have never heard of. Powell was also the first Fed Chair since 1978 to come from outside economics.

Watching Arthur Burns cave to Nixon in 1972 next to Powell holding firm under two different presidents gives students a real stake in central bank independence, not a textbook talking point. By the closing memo, most have picked a side and can defend it with an actual rate number.

From one teacher to another

I ask students to name the Fed Chair and almost nobody can, which is exactly the point, because the person running the meeting that moves interest rates for the entire country is somebody most of them have never heard of. They trace Powell's actual decisions using two real charts, the federal funds rate across his tenure and the S&P 500 reacting to it, and have to read specific values off both, like the rate hitting 0.25 percent just 12 days after COVID hit or the market low that followed his 2022 Jackson Hole speech, where he explicitly cited Paul Volcker before hiking rates to a 5.50 percent peak. What makes the lesson land is contrasting Powell's refusal to change course under pressure from two different presidents against Arthur Burns caving to Nixon in 1972, which gives students a real historical stake in the independence question instead of an abstract civics point. It ends with them writing a memo arguing whether one unelected official should really have this much influence over the economy, and I don't grade which side they take, only whether they can back it up with actual numbers off the charts.