SALT LAKE CITY — “Jay Powell & the Fed don’t have a clue.”
That, from a tweet by President Donald Trump last month and part of a long-running dialogue reflecting Trump’s unhappiness with the policies of the Federal Reserve in general and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell in specific.
In this particular instance, Trump was bemoaning the failure of the Fed to make another move on lowering benchmark interest rates to, according to Trump, stimulate the economy and spur export activity.
Powell passed on responding to the criticism, but told the Wall Street Journal last week that the Fed has an obligation to clearly explain what it does and why because “Congress has granted the Federal Reserve significant protections from short-term political pressures.”
Powell was in Salt Lake City Monday to speak at the premier of a new KUED-produced documentary film about Utah native Marriner Eccles, a former Federal Reserve chairman who is widely considered the man responsible for establishing the functional — and apolitical — independence of the body under President Franklin D. Roosevelt and, later, President Harry S. Truman. The central bank for the U.S. is responsible for setting monetary policy to help ensure economic and job growth as well as overseeing the country’s financial sector.
Elected Federal Reserve chairman in 2018 following six years on the board, Powell also served in U.S. Treasury positions under President George H.W. Bush and as a scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center, based in Washington, D.C.
On Monday, Powell told a packed house at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center that a five-point plan delivered in a speech Eccles gave at Salt Lake City’s Hotel Utah would become the basis of Roosevelt’s New Deal and help pull the country’s staggering economy out of the Great Depression.
“As the Depression deepened, (Eccles) presciently recognized that the federal government should act forcefully to put people back to work and stimulate business,” Powell said. “In a speech he delivered here in Utah in 1932, Marriner asked, ‘What is the purpose of an economic system if not to allow those willing and able to work the opportunity to do so and to guarantee them sustenance for their families and protection against want and destitution?’”
Powell noted Eccles was appointed to lead the Federal Reserve by Roosevelt in 1934 and would go on to champion two major policy milestones for the board — the Banking Act of 1935 and the Treasury-Federal Reserve Accord of 1951 — that would solidify the agency’s independence. Powell said Eccles’ accomplishments helped insulate the work of the Fed from the ebbs and tides of politics, both during Eccles’ time of public service and surviving to this day.
“Perhaps most importantly, from my perspective as Fed chair, (Eccles) is responsible more than any other person for the fact that the U.S. today has an independent central bank,” Powell said. “That is, a central bank able to make decisions in the long-term best interest of the economy, without regard to the political pressures of the moment.”
KUED General Manager James Morgese said once the idea of doing a documentary about Eccles was raised, there was never any doubt that it was a project worth doing.
“When the idea came up to do a documentary on Marriner Eccles, the choice was obvious,” Morgese said. “The Eccles family has done so much for Utah and Marriner Eccles saved the U.S. economy and pulled the country out of a depression through his policies and clear thinking during difficult times.”
Rep. Ben McAdams, D-Utah, also spoke before the screening, noting he had worked with staffers to enter a recognition of Marriner Eccles into the Congressional Record. McAdams said Eccles left an “incredible legacy ... not only to Utah, but the entire country.”
Eccles was born in Logan in 1890, the son of Scottish immigrants. After graduating from high school, he traveled to Glasgow, Scotland, in 1910 to serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Eccles’ father, David Eccles, had numerous successful business interests and the younger Eccles worked for those businesses throughout his childhood. After his father’s death in 1912, Marriner Eccles took over those business interests and created a family holding company, the Eccles Investment Co., in 1916 to manage the various enterprises. By the mid-1920s, Eccles, his brother George, and the Browning family controlled 17 banks in Utah, Idaho and Wyoming, and organized the First Security Corp., believed to be the first multibank holding company, to manage the 15 banks and a savings and loan institution, according to biographical information posted by the Federal Reserve.
Following his time at the Federal Reserve, which he led from 1934-1948, and serving on the board from 1948-1951, Eccles moved back to Utah and resumed responsibilities with the family-owned businesses. He also ran, unsuccessfully, to represent Utah in the U.S. Senate. Eccles died in 1977.
In 1982, the building that houses the Federal Reserve was renamed in honor of Marriner S. Eccles.
KUED’s “Marriner Eccles: Father of the Modern Federal Reserve” features interviews with former Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, economist and former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, Weber State University history professor Stephan Francis, current Federal Reserve board member Randal Quarles and others. The broadcast premiere of the documentary is scheduled for Oct. 21 at 9 p.m. with subsequent airings to follow.
Correction: In an earlier version, Marriner Eccles’ first name was misspelled in photo captions as Mariner.
