A little later that summer, the Democratic nominee agreed to do a photo-op in a battle tank with an army helmet perched awkwardly on his head.

GOP spin masters capitalized with the now infamous “tank ad” that lost Dukakis the election — and rightfully so.

President Trump touring the Federal Reserve’s headquarters with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on July 24, 2025. Getty Images

The public agreed that a pointy-headed dork who tried to pass himself off as a tough guy shouldn’t be anywhere near the US presidency.

That’s how I felt Thursday, watching the odd spectacle of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell donning an ill-fitting helmet as he and President Trump toured the Fed’s new unfinished and overindulgent $2.5 billion “Taj Mahal” headquarters.

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Yes, Trump wants Powell out mainly because the Fed boss refuses to lower interest rates and juice the economy.

But let’s pause a moment to contemplate the construction-site fiasco. Trump chose to tour the facility because he wanted to make Powell look like a fool.

And it worked. Like Powell, Trump, too, was wearing a helmet, but the president looked pretty comfortable as his hulking frame towered over the central banker’s. Recall that Trump is a real estate developer.

Powell, meanwhile, looked like an economist who had just landed on Mars. He stood by nervously as Trump took some shots at the project’s well-publicized cost overruns.

Powell did manage to point out that the president had mistakenly added a few hundred million dollars to the actual total, but the actual total was outrageous nonetheless.

It’s easy to shrug off the presser as just another day in our Trumpian soap opera. The president is a master at working the room. Powell is not — he can barely do his job setting interest rates.

Yet as we debate Powell’s future, the scene serves as a suitable Dukakis-like metaphor, and an indicator that maybe Trump is right, and Powell needs to go sooner rather than later.

Independence is key

It takes a lot for me to say that. I don’t necessarily agree that we need to cut interest rates before we see the impact of Trump’s possibly inflation-inducing tariffs.

Plus, Fed independence from political forces is of fundamental importance. It’s the reason people buy our debt and finance our standard of living.

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The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 gives the central bank this large degree of autonomy because if it appears the chairman is a patsy of the president — lowering rates on his orders simply to stimulate growth — investors will see our debt as worthless paper prone to the rav­ages of inflation.

If we can’t sell our debt, we will get the mother of all financial crises, one that makes 2008 look like a cakewalk.

But defending Fed independence on Powell’s record is a loser’s game. Trump in 2017 during his first term appointed Powell and the two butted heads immediately.

Trump wanted lower rates while the economy — thanks to his tax policies — was roaring.

Powell initially didn’t give in and for good reason: The economy was too hot. But he ultimately caved to Trump and started slashing interest rates.

It’s reason No. 1 he should be fired: He’s far from independent.

The rate cuts left the Fed with fewer policy measures when it really needed to add liquidity during the COVID lockdowns.

Kept printing money

Here’s reason No. 2: During COVID, Powell used whatever dry powder he had in the Fed’s arsenal to print money like it grew on trees.

Even after businesses opened and the pandemic ended, he kept printing. Interest rates remained at zero or near zero well into the Biden presidency. (He was re-appointed by Sleepy Joe to a four-year term that ends next year.)

All this occurred as Biden spent trillions of dollars, exploding our debt and setting the stage for inflation. Powell then brushed off concerns that all this continued liquidity would do more harm than good.

He seemed to be working with Biden’s inept Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to spin the situation, calling the inflation “transitory.”

It wasn’t. Inflation hit 9.1% before Powell began to raise rates. It was one of the worst policy mistakes ever made by a Fed chair; fighting inflation is part of his dual mandate and the most important part because it’s a tax on working-class Americans who can’t speculate around it in the markets.

I know — I am arguing that Trump is right to get rid of Powell for the wrong reasons. Tariffs could cause higher prices and cutting rates might spike them further. And if Trump did ax Powell before his term ends, it could set up a constitutional battle royal.

But it’s hard to defend Powell’s long track record of cluelessness on monetary policy — or his cluelessness at the construction site. The sooner he goes, the better.

The post Trump is right to want to Powell out at the Federal Reserve — but not just because of interest rates appeared first on Our Story Insight.

While Wall Street grapples with the president’s threats to fire the central bank’s boss, the rumor mill surrounding his possible successor has yielded a dizzying surprise of its own, On The Money has learned.

Bill Pulte, the current head of the Federal Housing Finance Authority that runs mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, has lately surfaced as a possible pick alongside the “two Kevins” – Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council; and Kevin Warsh, a Stanford professor and fellow at the right-leaning Hoover Institute.

While Wall Street grapples with the president’s threats to fire the central bank’s boss, the rumor mill surrounding his possible successor has yielded a dizzying surprise of its own. From left Bill Pulte, Kevin Warsh and Kevin Hassett

Let’s be clear – this Pulte rumor is not getting a lot of credence. Pulte is not an economist. He has a degree in broadcast journalism. He is 37 years old. Yet his name oddly began bouncing around the outer edge of the rumor mill after he posted on social media last week that the current Fed chair might step down.

Yes, Pulte runs an agency that oversees some $7 trillion in loans. He’s also the scion of the Pulte family that runs the big residential construction company now known as the Pulte Group. He worked in private equity.

But his social media feed shows he also tapped into the meme stock craze, even if he was careful not to give specific buy recs.

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While I kind of like the idea of a meme-stock guy running the Fed just for comedic value, the markets would probably puke with interest rates on the 10 and 30-year bond exploding.

On the other hand, we all know Trump loves easy money (he hates Powell for not being easier with it) and has made some unconventional choices for his cabinet in the past (cf. Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, RFK Jr., etc., etc.).

It’s probably nothing, of course. Has to be, right? Just one more thing to make the suits on Wall Street sweat a little harder this summer.

Kevin Hassett is a smart economist who’s also good on TV — a plus in Trump’s world. Getty Images

Back to reality (we hope?). Kevin Hassett  is a smart economist. He co-authored the 1999 book “Dow 36,0000” predicting a massive bull market in stocks. The markets subsequently fell with the dot-com bust, but the prediction was highly prescient, with the down closing Wednesday over 44,000.

Hassett is also good on TV — a plus in Trump world, but again, the question becomes whether he will be seen as a rubber-stamp on interest rate policy given his loyalty to the president and whether that will lead to bond market turmoil.

That brings us to the best choice for the job, Kevin Warsh, who  seems to have it all. He’s camera ready, and he has both the professional chops to do the job having been on the Fed’s board of governors during the 2008 financial crisis.

As reported, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is leading the search, and could pick himself. AFP via Getty Images

He’s said to be close with Trump who has leaned on him over the years on monetary policy issues. Another plus: Warsh has been a critic of Jerome Powell’s handling of interest rate policy.

Seems like a shoe-in for Trump right? Well maybe not. Warsh’s Powell critique is mainly over the Fed chair missing the boat on inflation back in 2021 and not raising interest rates fast enough. He would run a less interventionist Fed if he had his druthers, which might not be to The Donald’s liking given the president’s obsession with lower short term rates.

All that said, Warsh would make a really good Fed chair and he and Trump have a bond, I am told. Trump does pick people for top jobs he likes.

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As reported, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is leading the search, and could pick himself, which would be interesting to watch as that controversy unfolds. Bessent is highly qualified, though. He made his mark on Wall Street as a savvy hedge fund trader, worked for George Soros, the 94-year-old left-wing financier, who made his own fortune back in the day for shorting (betting against) the pound sterling and “breaking” the Bank of England during the UK currency crisis.

In other words Bessent understands monetary policy as well as anyone and Trump obviously trusts his economic knowledge since he’s heading his trade negotiations. His baggage will be making money – maybe too much of it as a speculator.

Can’t wait for those confirmation hearings.

The post The race to succeed Jerome Powell at the Fed just got weirder appeared first on Our Story Insight.

Bill Pulte, the chair of US government-backed mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, posted on X that he heard “reports” of Powell wavering about finishing his term — without providing any evidence.

“I think this will be the right decision for America, and the economy will boom,” the former journalist and private equity titan said.

Powell is facing heat for the expensive renovations of the Federal Reserve. REUTERS

Pulte, who as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency oversees Fannie and Freddie, did not reply to The Post’s request for comment.

A separate senior government official said “high-level, credible sources” inside the administration believe the under-fire Fed chair is weighing whether to walk away from his job.

The insider said Powell “had been feeling the heat” and has grown “fatigued “since The Post broke the story in April about how Fed bureaucrats had blown $2.5 billion on the revamp of its DC offices that Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) said was akin to the “Palace of Versailles.”

“Why would you stay at a party when no one wants you there?” the source added.

President Trump — who has repeatedly labeled Powell as “Too Slow” for failing to cut interest rates — on Thursday appointed three new members to the National Capital Planning Commission, which regulates federal development projects.

The shake up at NCPC, which has five voting members, is being seen as yet another move to pile more pressure on the man he nominated as Fed chair in 2018 to step aside.

A senior administration official told The Post that the string of broadsides launched at the 72-year-old Powell were part of a game of “4D chess” being played by the commander-in-chief and his allies, designed to pressure him into resigning.

A Fed spokesman declined to comment, pointing only to remarks on April 4 where Powell said he “intends” to see out his full term that expires in May 2026.

Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has repeatedly called for Powell to quit after what he called his “deceptive” testimony to Congress last month. Bloomberg via Getty Images

Powell has been accused by Pulte and other critics of misleading Congress when he lashed out at this newspaper’s “inflammatory coverage” that he branded “misleading and inaccurate.”

“There’s no VIP dining room. There’s no new marble. There are no special elevators,” Powell insisted during a June 25 hearing to the Senate Banking Committee. “There are no new water features, there’s no beehives, and there’s no roof terrace gardens.”

But his denials directly contradicted the project’s own planning document that had been signed off by NCPC in 2021.

The comments also drew scrutiny from the Office of Management and Budget chief Russ Vought on Thursday.

REUTERS

The White House spending watchdog took Powell to task for the glorified vanity project, which saw its costs balloon by 30% — from the original estimate of $1.9 billion.

“The President is extremely troubled by your management of the Federal Reserve System,” Vought wrote in a letter to Powell first obtained by The Post. 

“Instead of attempting to right the Fed’s fiscal ship, you have plowed ahead with an ostentatious overhaul of your Washington DC headquarters,” he wrote.

On Tuesday, The Post obtained a copy of the Fed’s 2025 budget via the Freedom of Information Act that confirmed the eye-popping cost of the work for the first time.

Powell had claimed to Congress that many of the plans rubber-stamped by the NCPC had since been discarded.

Rendings filed with the NCPC show what the controversial $2.5 billion project will look like once completed. NCPC

Vought said that would be a flagrant breach of the National Capital Planning Act that regulates building work on the National Mall. His letter demanded that Powell provide answers to a list of questions by next week.

The Fed’s next meeting is scheduled for the end of the July. The consensus on Wall Street is that the Fed interest rate, currently between 4.25% and 4.5%, will again remain unchanged.

Should Powell step down, his reported replacements are most likely to be Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council of the United States, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent or former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh.

But one White House insider insisted that Powell was going nowhere.

“There are no plans to change the Fed chair,” the senior source said.

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Bessent said it was up to the Fed to decide interest rates, although he added that if the central bank did not cut interest rates soon, any potential rate cut in September could be higher.

With the unemployment rate low and inflation above their 2% target, Fed officials have been reluctant to cut interest rates from the current 4.25% to 4.5% range until it is clear that the Trump administration’s tariff plans won’t drive up prices.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said if the central bank did not cut interest rates soon, any potential rate cut in September could be higher. REUTERS

President Trump has railed against Powell, a fellow Republican whom he appointed during his first time in office, and again urged him to resign. The president cannot fire Powell over a policy dispute.

Trump administration officials argue that a tax bill that passed in Congress will boost private sector investment and strengthen the US economy, insisting that while tariff increases could result in a one-time bump in prices, they should not drive up inflation over the longer term.

“If they want to make a mistake here and not cut, that’s fine,” Bessent told CNBC, insisting that tariffs imposed by Trump since taking office in January had not fueled inflation “thus far.”

“What we’ve seen so far is that tariffs haven’t hurt. The dog that didn’t bark was that tariffs are going to hurt the economy, they’re going to hurt markets,” Bessent said, citing a rapid market recovery after a 15% decline in April. The selloff came after Trump announced higher than expected tariffs against most US trading partners on April 2.

Based on previous Fed models, he said, the central bank would have already cut interest rates that are “very high real rates.”

Holding off raised the chance that the Fed would need to cut interest rates by more later, said Bessent, who has been named a contender for the Fed chair role.

President Trump has railed against Powell, a fellow Republican whom he appointed during his first time in office, and again urged him to resign. AP

Two jobs?

Asked if one could head both Treasury and the Fed at the same time, Bessent said that hadn’t been done since the 1930s, but did not explicitly rule out such a solution. Bessent said he was happy in his current job.

The Federal Reserve Act explicitly says “The members of the Board shall devote their entire time to the business of the Board,” which appears to rule out the possibility of Bessent doing two jobs at once.

Trump recently named Secretary of State Marco Rubio to serve as his national security adviser, making him the first person to hold both roles since Henry Kissinger in the 1970s.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday holds a handwritten note by Trump to Powell. JIM LO SCALZO/EPA/Shutterstock

Bessent said the administration will work on nominating a Fed chair to succeed Powell in the fall.

“We’ve been busy. The president’s been doing peace deals, trade deals, tax deals, and we are landing the plane on all of those. So we’re going to have more bandwidth after Labor Day,” he said.

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President Trump this week revived a longstanding threat against Jerome H. Powell when he accused the Federal Reserve chair of “playing politics” and moving too slowly to lower interest rates. But privately, according to people close to Mr. Trump, the president has for months been aware that trying to oust Mr. Powell could inject more volatility into jittery financial markets.

Investors are already uneasy after a period of tumult due to a blitz of tariffs announced by the administration this month. Undermining the political independence of the Fed, which is seen as critical across Wall Street, could risk a much more significant financial panic.

“If I want him out, he’ll be out of there real fast, believe me,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office of the White House on Thursday when asked about Mr. Powell. The warning came on the heels of an early morning social media post in which Mr. Trump said, “Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough!”

Mr. Trump’s advisers have repeatedly told him that firing Mr. Powell is both legally and financially fraught — and that the uncertainty could cause a significant downturn in financial markets. Mr. Trump, at least for the moment, has seemed persuaded, the people said.

For months, Mr. Trump has privately fretted about the prospect of a Great Depression-scale event’s happening on his watch — a scenario he shorthands in conversations as “1929.” But the events of the past two weeks so alarmed some of Mr. Trump’s closest advisers, including his Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, that Mr. Trump himself seems to have absorbed how close they came to a financial meltdown.

Mr. Trump’s decision at the beginning of the month to announce historic tariffs on nearly all of the country’s trading partners and aggressively escalate his global trade war sent financial markets into a tailspin. Stocks plummeted, and an alarming sell-off in U.S. government bonds and the dollar fanned fears that the country was starting to lose its vaunted status as the safest corner in the financial system.

After the scope of Mr. Trump’s tariffs became clear, Mr. Powell cautioned that the policies would lead to both higher inflation and slower growth. His comments suggested that the bar would be high for the Fed to lower rates, after a series of cuts last year.

Mr. Trump soon reversed course and paused many of his tariffs for 90 days, citing a “queasy” bond market. But that reprieve ended swiftly as Mr. Trump raised tariffs on Chinese imports to at least 145 percent even as he exempted an array of the most widely used consumer electronics and heralded imminent trade deals with other countries. The whiplash has kept financial markets on edge and has done little to alleviate Mr. Powell’s concerns about the economic outlook.

At an event at the Economic Club of Chicago on Wednesday, Mr. Powell made clear that it was the Fed’s “obligation” to ensure that “a one-time increase in the price level does not become an ongoing inflation problem” even as he reiterated his warnings about the prospects of slower growth. He also stressed that the Fed could afford to be patient on taking further action on interest rates until it had more clarity about the outlook.

Those comments, coupled with the fact that the European Central Bank was readying to lower interest rates on Thursday, appeared to set off Mr. Trump’s tirade against Mr. Powell.

Even before the recent bond market turmoil, it seemed to advisers that Mr. Trump was leery about firing Mr. Powell. Mr. Trump regularly complains about how “terrible” Mr. Powell is and that he believes the Fed chair is deliberately keeping interest rates high to hurt him, for political reasons, an adviser said, but the president has not seemed serious about replacing him imminently.

Last week, Mr. Bessent, who described the Fed’s independence as a “jewel box that’s got to be preserved,” said the White House would begin interviewing candidates this fall to replace Mr. Powell. Mr. Trump had nominated Mr. Powell in his first presidential term, and President Joseph R. Biden Jr. renominated him. Mr. Powell’s term as chair officially ends May 2026, although his term as a governor runs through 2028, suggesting that he could stay on the Fed’s Board of Governors if he wanted to. Mr. Trump will first be able to fill a vacancy in January, when the term expires for Adriana Kugler, a sitting governor.

The president has already appointed Michelle Bowman, a current governor, to be the next vice chair for supervision in charge of regulating Wall Street. That position became available in February after Michael Barr, who stayed on as a governor, stepped down from the position to avoid a protracted legal battle with Mr. Trump that he worried would hurt the central bank.

Kevin Warsh, a former Fed governor with close ties to Mr. Bessent, is seen as a leading contender to serve as the next chair. During the transition, Mr. Trump was interested in the idea of making Mr. Warsh, whom he had considered for Fed chair in his first term, his Treasury secretary. The president also considered installing him as Fed chair to replace Mr. Powell before the end of his term, according to people briefed on his thinking. At the time, Mr. Trump inquired about his legal rights to fire Mr. Powell, and what the broader effects of such a move would be.

Mr. Powell has been emphatic that the law does not permit a president to remove the chair of the central bank nor meddle directly with the institution. The Federal Reserve Act says members of the Fed’s seven-strong Board of Governors can be removed only “for cause,” which is interpreted as serious misconduct and other violations.

When asked by reporters on Friday about the possibility of firing Mr. Powell, Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, said, “The president and his team will continue to study that matter.” Later in the day, Mr. Trump again pushed the Fed chair to lower rates but didn’t discuss his future.

The Fed’s independence from the White House has historically been seen as crucial to the stability of the economy and the global financial system. Congress granted the central bank this status to ensure it could make policy decisions related to the economy and the banking system free from political interference.

The fear is that Mr. Trump will seek to erode that protection. Already, he has issued an executive order that seeks to exert authority over how the Fed oversees Wall Street. Monetary policy decisions were exempted, but the expansive nature of the order has raised questions about how long that separation will last.

Mr. Trump has also fired officials at the Federal Trade Commission, the Merit Systems Protection Board and the National Labor Relations Board, removals that have prompted legal challenges that the Supreme Court is set to hear.

What the Trump administration is arguing is that the precedent — which stems from a 1935 ruling commonly referred to as Humphrey’s Executor — infringes on the president’s executive power. The ruling’s proponents argue that it insulates independent agencies from undue political influence.

This month, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. temporarily authorized Mr. Trump’s dismissals while the challenges move forward in court. The chief justice, acting on his own, issued an “administrative stay,” an interim measure intended to give the justices some time while the full Supreme Court considers the matter.

Mr. Powell said on Wednesday that he did not expect the court’s decision to apply to the Fed, but that it was something the central bank was “monitoring carefully.” The Fed’s independence is a “matter of law” and “very widely understood and supported in Washington and in Congress, where it really matters,” he added.

Tony Romm contributed reporting.

The post Trump’s Attack of Powell Tempered by Risk of Market Panic appeared first on Our Story Insight.

Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, warned that President Trump’s tariffs risk stoking even higher inflation and slower growth than initially expected, as he struck a more downbeat tone about the outlook, despite the economy so far remaining in a “good place.”

“While uncertainty remains elevated, it is now becoming clear that the tariff increases will be significantly larger than expected,” he said. “The same is likely to be true of the economic effects, which will include higher inflation and slower growth.”

Mr. Powell characterized the risks of that outcome, which he warned could include higher unemployment, as “elevated.”

“While tariffs are highly likely to generate at least a temporary rise in inflation, it is also possible that the effects could be more persistent,” he said in a speech at a conference in Arlington, Va., on Friday.

“Avoiding that outcome would depend on keeping longer-term inflation expectations well anchored, on the size of the effects, and on how long it takes for them to pass through fully to prices,” he said. Higher inflation stemming from tariffs could show up “in the coming quarters,” he said.

Mr. Powell added that the Fed’s “obligation” was to ensure that a “one-time increase in the price level does not become an ongoing inflation problem.”

His comments cap off a tumultuous week after Mr. Trump jolted the world with shock-and-awe tariffs that risk setting off an inflation surge and a sharp economic downturn. Financial markets across the globe have tumbled as the reality of the president’s plans begin to set in.

The rout continued on Friday, with the S&P 500 down around 4 percent, following China’s decision to retaliate with 34 percent tariffs on U.S. goods and comments from Mr. Trump and his economic advisers seeking to dismiss the potential economic pain.

Minutes before Mr. Powell’s speech, the president went on Truth Social and called on the Fed chair to lower interest rates as he attacked him for being “always ‘late.’”

“This would be a PERFECT time for Fed Chairman Jerome Powell to cut Interest Rates. He is always “late,” but he could now change his image, and quickly,” Mr. Trump wrote. “CUT INTEREST RATES, JEROME, AND STOP PLAYING POLITICS!”

In a moderated discussion after his speech, Mr. Powell acknowledged that the combination of higher unemployment and higher inflation would be “difficult” for the Fed to navigate given its dual goals of fostering a healthy labor market and low, stable inflation.

“If we find ourselves in that situation, we look at how far each of the two variables is from its goal, and we ask ourselves, ‘How long would it take to get back?’ And we weigh those things and make a decision about what to do,” he said. Mr. Powell added that the two goals were not in “tension” right now.

He also stressed that the Fed was “strictly nonpolitical.”

“We try to stay as far as we can from the political process,” he said. People “expect us to tell the truth, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

The magnitude of the global trade war that is brewing creates complications for the Fed, which has been trying since the pandemic to bring inflation back down to its 2 percent target while avoiding a recession. Just a couple of months ago, the prospects of this so-called “soft landing” looked bright, aided by the Fed’s decision in the second half of the year to lower interest rates by a percentage point.

Now, Fed officials are confronting a much thornier set of issues that have upended expectations about when the central bank might be able to lower interest rates again after it paused cuts in January. Two distinct camps have emerged — some see the Fed holding off on rate cuts for the whole year, while others see them moving more aggressively, and potentially earlier, than initially expected.

Fed officials have long maintained that they can be patient about monetary policy decisions because the economy is in a good place. March’s unexpectedly strong jobs report, which showed employers adding 228,000 new positions, reinforced the Fed’s approach but did little to allay concerns about the economic damage potentially coming down the pipeline.

On Friday, Mr. Powell said it was “too soon to say what will be the appropriate path for monetary policy,” but reiterated that the central bank was “well positioned to deal with the risks and uncertainties we face as we gain a better understanding of the policy changes and their likely effects on the economy.”

“We’ve taken a step back and we’re watching to see what the policies turn out to be and the ways in which they will affect the economy, and then we’ll be able to act,” Mr. Powell said during the discussion.

That approach echoes comments from the Fed’s vice chair, Philip Jefferson, and a governor, Lisa Cook, on Thursday.

“In my view, there is no need to be in a hurry to make further policy rate adjustments,” Mr. Jefferson said in a speech.

Ms. Cook said the Fed can “afford to be patient but attentive” even as she added that she placed “more weight on scenarios where risks are skewed to the upside for inflation and to the downside for growth.”

That combination “could pose challenges for monetary policy,” she said.

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The answer, in Dina Powell McCormick and Sen. Dave McCormick’s case, is a very long list of people.

The couple’s new book, “Who Believed in You?” taps into their vast Rolodex — spanning politics, technology, entertainment, finance and fashion — to share how instrumental mentors have been in the lives of the people running the world today.

“We wanted people to see that, whatever your profession, someone helped you get there,” Powell told me. “Americans today can be that person for someone else.”

The book’s index is the ultimate list of name-checks. Tory Burch, David Chang, Condoleezza Rice and Brian Grazer all make appearances, as do presidents. (Powell worked for two: George W. Bush as Sr. White House Advisory, and Donald Trump as Deputy National Security Advisory.)

Dina Powell McCormick and Sen. Dave McCormick wrote “Who Believed in You” during pandemic lockdown, when they saw the impact the isolation had on their daughters. REUTERS

Lloyd Blankfein, who Powell identifies as one of her most important mentors, is even quoted — jokingly referring to himself as Powell’s “tormentor” for the challenging feedback he gave her.

The book is worth a read for the inside accounts of how the rich and powerful got where they are. (Microsoft’s Satya Nadella credits Doug Burgum for helping him become a CEO — who knew?) But it also highlights just how pivotal it is to build deep relationships, to find success and meaning.

Powell acknowledges it sounds “corny.” But she sees a real American crisis in terms of how many young people are lonely and lost — in large part because Gen Z hasn’t been challenged to get where they are supposed to go. This book is her and her husband’s effort to spark a movement of adults who will mentor and believe in the next generation.

“One of the most transformative experiences of my life has been building deep relationships with mentors and mentees,” she told me. “This could be the moment to ignite a mentoring movement where people truly believe in the power of investing in one another.”

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon made a cameo at Powell’s Manhattan event this week, praising her as “a better banker with more and better relationships than many big finance CEOs.” Courtesy of Dina Powell

It seemed to strike a chord with attendees at a packed event — hosted by Mary Erdoes, CEO of the asset and wealth management division at JPMorgan — celebrating the book earlier this week.

More than 300 women from firms all across Wall Street — including BDT & MSD Partners (where Powell is Vice Chairman), Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan — were on hand. Franklin Templeton’s Jenny Johnson, Citigroup’s Jane Fraser and Goldman Sachs’ Asahi Pompey joined Powell to candidly describe the self-doubt and tears (even in the office bathroom) it took to get to the top of their game.

It was a powerhouse crowd, with JPMorgan’s Kristin Lemkau, PR maven Desiree Gruber, Jessica Seinfeld, Wendi Murdoch, Amy Griffin, and Margaret Anadau.

Jamie Dimon also made a cameo, praising Powell as “a better banker with more and better relationships than many big finance CEOs. She’s the full package — doing it all at the highest levels, in an industry where women were historically disadvantaged, especially when she started out.”

Powell acknowledges it sounds “corny,” but she sees a real American crisis in terms of how many young people are lonely and lost. Courtesy of Dina Powell

What struck Powell most about the event, she told me, wasn’t the attendees’ focus on climbing the corporate ladder. “These women weren’t asking about their next promotion,” she said. “They were hungry for purpose — meaningful lives, not just successful careers.”

Powell herself immigrated to the US from Egypt with her family at age six, not knowing a word of English, and went on to work in the White House, become a partner at Goldman Sachs and, now, serve as vice chair at Byron Trott, Gregg Lemkau and Michael Dell’s investment firm.

This story is part of NYNext, an indispensable insider insight into the innovations, moonshots and political chess moves that matter most to NYC’s power players (and those who aspire to be).

McCormick attended West Point and served in the first Gulf War. He later became CEO of hedge fund behemoth Bridgewater Associates for more than a decade before being elected as the junior senator from Pennsylvania.

At the event, it was remarkably hopeful to hear from five different women about how they created their American dream at a time when more than three-quarters of respondents believe the next generation will be worse off than they are, according to a Pew Research Center study. More than half of Generation Z also say they are either pessimistic or feel unprepared for the future, according to a Gallup and Walton Family Foundation report.

The deep relationships with mentors and mentees that Powell helped her launch initiatives including Goldman’s 10,000 Women and 10,000 Small Businesses which provide entrepreneurs business education, mentorship and access to capital. Colleagues who launched the program with her spoke at the event along with some of their mentees.

Powell adds, “We hope people will … ask themselves three questions: Who believed in you? Have you thanked them? And who will you believe in and invest in? If we all ask ourselves those questions, we can make a huge impact in the country.”

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