GERMANY PERSPECTIVE

Deutsche Welle and Tagesschau both covered the Powell investigation closure. DW headlines 'U.S. Department of Justice abandons investigation against Federal Reserve chair Powell,' in sober but analytically loaded style: the article recalls Trump's past attempts to fire Powell directly and the constitutional guardrails that prevented it. Tagesschau covers 'investigations against head of American central bank abandoned'—an angle that resonates strongly in Germany, where the Bundesbank, then the ECB, were built on the model of total imperviousness to political pressure. German economists interviewed by DW worry: if the Fed becomes a politically dependent institution, the entire model of independent central banks—including the ECB—can be questioned by populist governments in Europe.