The Federal Reserve's inspector general released a report confirming that nobody at the Fed violated criminal law during a renovation project that went spectacularly wrong. The report was long-awaited. By nobody.
Renovation failures without criminal conduct is a fascinating legal outcome. It means someone f*cked up badly enough to warrant an inspector general investigation but not badly enough to face actual consequences. This is the employment equivalent of getting caught cheating on your wife with her sister and having your wife say she's disappointed but not angry.
The Fed spent months investigating itself and found itself innocent of crimes. Retail traders watching this unfold should take notes. Next time you blow up your account on 0DTE options because some guy on Twitter said NVDA calls were free money, just hire an inspector general to investigate whether you violated federal criminal law. When the answer comes back no, frame the report and tell your wife the losses were renovation failures.
The inspector general searched for reasonable grounds to believe federal criminal law had been violated. They found none. Not because the renovation went smoothly. The headline literally says it failed. They just failed in a way that wasn't technically a felony, which is the most Fed thing possible.
This is the same institution that sets interest rates affecting trillions of dollars in global assets. They cannot renovate a building without an inspector general getting involved, but sure, they've got inflation figured out.
The report was long-awaited, which means people knew about the renovation failures for months or years before the investigation concluded. Everyone sat around wondering if crimes happened while the inspector general slowly determined that incompetence and criminal conduct are two different things. Retail traders lose sleep over whether their broker will approve their next trade. Fed employees sleep fine knowing their worst-case scenario is a strongly worded memo about drywall.
Photo by Andy Feliciotti on Unsplash
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