The Abyss Gazes Back: Powell, Trump, and the Specter of Inflation
April arrived like a harbinger of ill omen, President Trump’s pronouncements on tariffs and trade igniting a tremor that shook the foundations of Wall Street. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) suffered a decline almost biblical in its severity—the fifth steepest in nearly a century. The venerable Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) and the ambitious Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) succumbed to correction and, for the latter, the chilling embrace of a bear market. A fall, one could argue, mirroring the internal fallibility of man himself.