This past week, in the midst of many competing events, the nation's news-aware and money-savvy cohorts gave their undivided attention to a professorial-looking fellow calmly reading from a piece of paper.
The bespectacled reader was Jerome Powell, who bears a weighty title as chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Bank. While he is unknown to most Americans, his economic power is sometimes said to rival that of the president himself.
