“Do you really feel like a God?” This was the question Raghuram Rajan, the former governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), posed to US Federal Reserve (Fed) chair Jerome Powell in a fascinating conversation organised recently by the Economic Club of Chicago. That a central banker should be seeking an answer to this from another central banker made it all the more amazing. While we are not sure what Rajan thought about this himself and whether during his term at the RBI felt like a God or not but here is what Powell had to say: “In terms of being a God, I would say, we are blessed with a large number of amply compensated critics who would kind of tend to undercut that (feeling).” While Powell blamed his critics for this apparent inability to experience this joy, he did feel being a central banker was indeed “the best job in government” and that he did “enjoy and love the job” which, at times, was also “quite humbling because everybody makes mistakes. The economy is (after all) just not very predictable.”
On a question at a more personal level as what was it that Powell Liked “to do most at home after an exhausting day?” The Fed chair had a simple and straight answer: “I play one of my guitars, I do zoom calls with my kids and my grandkids and I go to gym too just to stay in shape.”