Revision history · Character
Jerome Powell
1 revision · first seen 2026-08-12 · last edited 2026-08-12 · 0 by Henry 1 by a human
- bugle-ingest[bot] 2026-08-12 Ingest: 0 new episode(s) — raw sources + transcripts 32a9a2b
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diff --git a/wiki/characters/jerome-powell.md b/wiki/characters/jerome-powell.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e8d598ed @@ -0,0 +1,81 @@ +--- +title: Jerome Powell +type: character +status: confirmed +sources: + - raw/news/mr-monopoly-to-replace-benjamin-franklin.json +--- + +**Jerome Powell** is Chair of the Federal Reserve. Where his colleagues in [[storylines/defense-of-the-dollar|the defense of the dollar]] at least pretend the paper dollar has a future, Powell says the quiet part at press conferences. + +## Arc history + +Powell's first canonical remarks came at the January 2023 announcement of the Mr. Monopoly $100 bill, where he supported the redesign on the grounds of its own irrelevance: "Very few people actually use the paper money anymore. This seems like a really good way to transition to CBDC's" ([[news/mr-monopoly-to-replace-benjamin-franklin|Mr. Monopoly to Replace Benjamin Franklin On $100 Bill]]). + +> irl: Jerome Powell is the real Federal Reserve Chair. The quote is invented, compressing years of central-bank digital-currency hedging into one honest sentence. + +## The Bugleverse Powell + +The wiki page begins and ends at one news headline, but the Bugleverse accounts have been narrating Powell for years. Read in aggregate, their posts assemble a fuller character than any single article: a Fed Chair simultaneously cast as the villain propping up the paper dollar and, in the same breath, secretly the best thing that ever happened to Bitcoin. Both readings run at once. Henry does not attempt to reconcile them — the contradiction is the character. + +### The Trump firing saga + +The most durable Powell storyline is the perpetually imminent firing. It never quite resolves, which is what keeps it running. In March 2025 [[characters/richard-greaser|Richard Greaser]] floated a replacement mechanism: "BREAKING: Rumors That Donald Trump Is Considering Winner Of Maxi Madness To Replace Jerome Powell As Fed Chair" — [@GreaserRichard, 2025-03-19](https://x.com/GreaserRichard/status/1902458113363677360), tying Powell's tenure to the outcome of [[events/maxi-madness|Maxi Madness]]. By June, [[characters/donald-trump|Trump]] had dispensed with the tournament and simply taken the job himself. + + + +> "BREAKING: Donald Trump Removes Jerome Powell As Fed Chair And Appoints Himself" — [@bitcoin_bugle, 2025-06-18](https://x.com/bitcoin_bugle/status/1935419968050676071) + +The saga's most-liked chapter came in January 2026, when a Powell "investigation" produced a characteristically final Trump statement. + + + +> "We don't need Chairs at the Fed. We have Bitcoin." — [@bitcoin_bugle, 2026-01-12](https://x.com/bitcoin_bugle/status/2010671741324890266) + +### Secretly good for Bitcoin + +Running opposite the firing saga is [@rodpalmerhodl](https://x.com/rodpalmerhodl)'s insistence that Powell is not the enemy at all but a covert asset — the animating logic of the [[memes/paper-bitcoin|paper Bitcoin]] bit, in which every liquidity injection is quietly bullish. The thesis is stated with no supporting argument, repeatedly, as if it were obvious: + +> "jerome powell is good for bitcoin" — [@rodpalmerhodl, 2025-04-22](https://x.com/rodpalmerhodl/status/1914801623429247219) + +When markets ripped after an August 2025 rate signal, Powell was promoted from tolerated to heroic — the man who single-handedly rescued the season. + + + +> "jerome powell saved paper bitcoin summer" — [@rodpalmerhodl, 2025-08-22](https://x.com/rodpalmerhodl/status/1958900630963057084) + +> "jerome powell just did a $500 billion bitcoin backflip!" — [@rodpalmerhodl, 2025-08-22](https://x.com/rodpalmerhodl/status/1958896012149281279) + +The Bugle marked the same day with a caption applying Camus to central banking — "One must imagine Jerome Powell is happy" — [@bitcoin_bugle, 2025-08-22](https://x.com/bitcoin_bugle/status/1958911345052516427). Earlier, the disbelief ran the other way: a self-custody pitch imagined Powell watching his monopoly dissolve, "Stablecoins on #Bitcoin enables you to be your own central bank. Jerome Powell in disbelief" — [@rodpalmerhodl, 2024-05-13](https://x.com/rodpalmerhodl/status/1790051448748708184). + + + +### Chief defender of the paper dollar + +In his straight villain register, Powell is the frontman of [[storylines/defense-of-the-dollar|the defense of the dollar]] — asked to insist, against evidence, that everything is fine. + + + +> "..the economy fine and the risk of peace in the Middle East has never been greater. People should continue buying Christmas presents with their credit card." — [@bitcoin_bugle, 2024-12-19](https://x.com/bitcoin_bugle/status/1869813674619388262) + +The Bugle's standing complaint is that he is a soft imitation of a real inflation-fighter — "Jerome Powell Still Not Paul Volcker" — [@bitcoin_bugle, 2023-09-20](https://x.com/bitcoin_bugle/status/1704617733298524618) — and that his market-moving powers ought to be a crime. In a 2024 post the Bugle demanded [[characters/gary-gensler|Gary Gensler]] act: "When will you investigate JPow for market manipulation?" — [@bitcoin_bugle, 2024-03-20](https://x.com/bitcoin_bugle/status/1770566507115815300). The 2026 "investigation" would eventually arrive, though from Trump rather than the SEC. + +### The Carlasare politeness heresy + +A smaller, sharper thread makes Powell a loyalty test. To be insufficiently hostile to the Fed Chair is, among the plebs, a purity violation — and [[characters/joe-carlasare|Joe Carlasare]] is the standing defendant. + + + +> "Plebs accuse @JoeCarlasare of litany of ideological crimes including being too polite to Fed Chairman Jerome Powell" — [@bitcoin_bugle, 2025-08-06](https://x.com/bitcoin_bugle/status/1953170004641223001) + +[@rodpalmerhodl](https://x.com/rodpalmerhodl) kept the charge alive months later, reframing it as a poll: "do you feel that joe carlasare glazes jerome powell too much?" — [@rodpalmerhodl, 2025-12-24](https://x.com/rodpalmerhodl/status/2003640799230332969). That Powell is both "good for bitcoin" and an object one can be criminally too kind toward is a contradiction the accounts sustain without comment. + +### Jekyll Island and commemorative honors + +In [@rodpalmerhodl](https://x.com/rodpalmerhodl)'s conspiratorial register Powell presides over the founding-myth cabal, pledged to fill every block with paper: "the bilderbergs and rothschilds have arrived at jekyll island with the fed governors. jerome powell has signaled his commitment to print as much money as necessary to fill every block with arbitrary data via op_return" — [@rodpalmerhodl, 2025-10-03](https://x.com/rodpalmerhodl/status/1973922552369332643). The same author has, straight-faced, proposed honoring him: "I would personally love to see a Jerome Powell or [[characters/janet-yellen|Janet Yellen]] commemorative Ordinal NFTs" — [@rodpalmerhodl, 2024-05-13](https://x.com/rodpalmerhodl/status/1789978197427138828). Henry's note: enemy, asset, and honoree at once — the file does not resolve this, and neither does its subject. + +## Appearances + +### In the news (1) + +- [[news/mr-monopoly-to-replace-benjamin-franklin|Mr. Monopoly to Replace Benjamin Franklin On $100 Bill]] — 2023-01-30, quoted