Powell's Fed Struggles with Bank Failures and SVB Collapse

Critics of the Federal Reserve are piling on as the central bank struggles with overheated inflation and a banking crisis that's partly a result of its own policies. The Fed has raised interest rates by 4.5 percentage points in 12 months, one of the fastest paces of monetary tightening ever, which contributed to the trouble at Silicon Valley Bank. Fed critics in Congress charge the Fed with trying to put millions of Americans out of work as its main way to corral inflation. The Fed now holds the near-term fate of the US economy in its hands, and with it Biden's political future.