The Stock Market Waves Goodbye to Easy Money

The most important job of the chairman of the Federal Reserve is largely an intangible one: to instill confidence in money, markets and the economy. But as soon as Jerome Powell was sworn in on Feb. 5–indeed, before he was sworn in–confidence collapsed and took the stock market with it. The Dow Jones average plummeted 666 points on Feb. 2 and 1,175 points on Feb. 5–the largest point drop in its history–before stabilizing Feb. 6.