Original link: Federal prosecutors open criminal investigation into the Fed and Jerome Powell / CNN.
Honestly 2.5 B$ for a building renovation sound crazy. But even more crazy is to make it a criminal investigation. And Powell will leave in May anyway.
And it is pretty obvious that Powell is right that this has more to do with the administrations power over Fed than with renovation costs.
I think that almost everyone besides the administration see value in Fed being independent.
What the administration does not seem to understand is that the "power" of Fed is due to its independence. If an independent Fed based on their many experts in Economics and the vast data material they collect say that the interest is going down, then the market belives it and the interest goes down. But if a Fed acting as messenger for the administration say that the interest is going down then nobody will pay attention. Remember that the interest rate Fed actually determines is just the interest rate for short term inter bank liquidity swaps. They do not set the interest rate business and people actually pay.