(Reuters) – Americans’ confidence in the economic leadership of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has dropped to the lowest of any US central bank chief in recent years, according to a Gallup poll released on Tuesday about the nation’s economic leadership. Widespread skepticism is also shown.
Only 36% of respondents to a Gallup poll conducted last month said they had a “very good deal” or a “fair amount” of confidence in Powell.
This was the lowest for any Fed chairman since Gallup began the annual survey in 2001, when Alan Greenspan was in charge; The previous low was 37% for Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen during her first year as central bank leader in 2014.
Powell’s confidence rating among the public has declined by more than 20 percent since 2020, when the American public had the most trust in him than any Fed chair since Greenspan in 2004 in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.
That decline, along with a rise in inflation, played a role that Powell and other economic leaders were slow to recognize and act on.
After initially viewing inflation as a “fleeting” problem that would resolve itself without the need for a major response from the Fed, Powell last year conducted the sharpest increase in interest rates in a generation and made inflation central. remains well above the level of the bank. target level.
However, Powell was not alone in seeing the American public losing faith in his own abilities.
Confidence in President Joe Biden’s economic leadership fell to the lowest level of his presidency at 35%, down from 40% last year and 57% shortly after he takes office in 2021.
Meanwhile, public confidence in Yellen as Treasury Secretary dropped to 37% from 54% two years earlier, the last time Gallup polled that position.
The survey also found trust deficit in Congress leaders of both the parties.
The poll was conducted between April 3 and 25 and included a random sample of 1,013 US adults and had a “margin of sampling error” of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
(Reporting by Dan Burns; Editing by Marguerita Choy)
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