Fed Chair Trump

His favorite interest rate is zero.

My life rules include:

• When I’m invited to the Flagstaff House above Boulder, Colorado, I go.

• When I’m offered a bottle of Caymus special selection cab, I accept.

• When hedge fund manager Thaddeus Wentworth wants to discuss the Federal Reserve, I listen.

So you can imagine that when all three coincided, with Thad inviting me to the Flagstaff House to discuss the Federal Reserve over a bottle of Caymus, my calendar cleared.

Before the phrase “ink me in” could take flight I found myself perched at the corner window table on the upper deck, view down the foothills to Pearl Street and my old University of Colorado stomping grounds, watching a big sister of a waitress uncork that wine in an air of knowing exactly what she was about to unleash. Into the glasses it went, and there sat yours truly, rapt in Thad’s court.

Like most experienced investors, Thad knows that political drama means little to Wall Street. Like everyone, he has political opinions, but as far as the generally rising stock market is concerned, “presidents come, presidents go, profits grow.” Occasionally, a tax code edit adds pressure, but stocks have risen through those too. Interest rates figure prominently, but presidents have nothing to do with them, hence the sideshow nature of the four-year cycle to the financial world.

At least, presidents have traditionally had nothing to do with interest rates.

“But that’s the rub this cycle,” said Thad.

Only newcomers to his table ever refer to him as Mr. Wentworth or, heaven forbid, Thaddeus. “Thad, for Chrissake,” he once told a colleague who’d let fly the Thaddeus moniker. “You make it sound like I’m running a Victorian boarding school.”

Back to the rub.

“Trump is talking about changing things up at the Fed, even that the president himself should play a part in setting interest rates.” Thad’s eyebrows locked in the up position.

Now that would ratchet up the relevance for investors, and is what he had summoned me to discuss.