After leaving the Treasury in 1993, Powell, who is often referred to as Jay, returned to Wall Street. In 1997, he joined the Carlyle Group, a private-equity firm that was known for buying and selling defense businesses and making large profits. In 2005, he left and ran his own firm for a few years. Eventually, he joined the Bipartisan Policy Center, a centrist think tank, where his advocacy for fiscal prudence attracted the notice of Timothy Geithner, the Treasury Secretary in the Obama Administration. Although Powell was a registered Republican, in 2012 Obama appointed him as a governor on the Fed’s board, and in 2018 Donald Trump, much to his eventual regret, elevated him to chair. A little more than a year later, after the central bank had failed to cut interest rates as he demanded, Trump tweeted: “who is our bigger enemy, Jay Powel or Chairman Xi.”