Fed Governor Waller: Trump Poses Threat to Fed Independence, Has Not Succeeded So Far

Waller's framing is notable because it treats Fed independence as a live stress test rather than a settled norm, and locates the defense outside the Fed itself — in Congress and the courts. That shifts the question from personalities to institutional durability, which matters for anyone pricing rate expectations and dollar-denominated assets, including crypto and tokenized RWAs. The open question is whether that external backstop holds if political pressure intensifies, and whether market participants start demanding a premium for the risk that it does not.