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Yesterday, the Federal Reserve confirmed that its chairman, Jerome Powell, had earlier this year been duped into a conversation about the economy by a Russian comedic duo pretending to be Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The fake interview, which a Fed spokesman gamely tried to dismiss as “a friendly conversation,” ended up being broadcast on Russian TV. And from there, as the BBC reports, “Video now circulating on the internet shows Mr. Powell describing a sharp slowdown in growth in the U.S., following the bank’s efforts to rein in price rises.”

Anytime a Fed chairman so much as sneezes, markets move, domestic and international economies recalibrate themselves, and huge sums of money are won and lost. So the news of Powell’s gullibility, and his grimly pessimistic outlook, couldn’t have…