In other words, Trump as president got rid of the Fed chief he should have embraced and named a replacement at odds with his newfound leniency on rates.

Trump now regrets appointing Powell, who is doing what hawkish Fed chiefs do, which is raise rates during solid economic expansions. The Fed, in the words of our president, has gone “loco.”

But just where is the loco? When he fired Yellen the dove, Trump sent an unmistakably clear message to the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee: Low rates are bad. When he appointed Powell, the message was reinforced: The days of easy money and crisis-management monetary policy are over.

Some people have argued Trump may not have understood what message he was sending, but the rest of the economic firmament read it loud and clear.

Perhaps a better phrase might be “sensitive.” Past presidents usually have been more attuned to capital markets, using measured and accommodating language specifically designed not to roil either equity or fixed-income traders.

Markets have taken note and investors now seem to be fully incorporating into their outlooks what the end of cheap capital will have on corporate profits and the macroeconomy.

But it seems as if it’s more than that: It’s almost as if the president’s economic agenda was geared toward forcing the Fed to tighten monetary policy. By most accounts, the president’s tariffs pose an inflationary risk, with the added potential for his trade war with China to damp or even end this economic recovery.

Then there were Trump’s pro-cyclical tax cuts. Classic economic theory tells us that during the latter stages of an economic cycle, the government should be reducing spending and increasing taxes to manage the deficit. John Maynard Keynes demonstrated that countercyclical policy works to offset economic weakness and declining demand; big tax cuts and deficit spending are best done when the economy is slowing and the private sector is retrenching.

Instead, eight years after an economic recovery began, with the stock market at record highs and unemployment at near-record lows, Trump and the Republican Congress passed a $1 trillion tax cut. A year later, the Congressional Budget Office announces that the budget deficit rose 17 percent in fiscal 2018 and is headed for $1 trillion in the current fiscal year.

Was anyone not expecting the results to be potentially inflationary?