Fed Officials Stress Independence as Rate Hold Signals Mount

A slew of Federal Reserve officials spoke to the importance of central bank independence on Wednesday in response to questions about the news that the US Department of Justice issued subpoenas to the Fed focused on a costly building renovation and Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s congressional testimony last year about the project.

Among those, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari became the first policymaker to explicitly back Powell’s counterclaim that the DOJ’s investigation was a pretext for putting more pressure on the central bank on interest rates.

“The escalation over the course of the past year is really about monetary ...