Imagine this: Just weeks before the presidential election the Federal Reserve decides to pump many billions of dollars into the financial system — a move that will keep the economy percolating at least until after the president is re-elected.

This action is known by the term “Quantitative Easing,” or QE, a move that could lead to short-term gains in the economy and the stock market but provide fuel for long-term hyper-inflation.

No matter, it will help the president.

What would the president’s opponents say? They wouldn’t “say” anything. They’d howl in anger.

Now what if all this happened, say, on Sept. 13, which is just seven and a half weeks before the November election. The Democrats and Trump haters would go crazy!

I’m playing a little trick on you. And I picked Sept. 13 for a very specific reason.

In 2012 — right before President Obama was reelected — the Fed under former chairman Ben Bernanke did just what I described above.

In the press release that followed the Sept. 12 and Sept. 13, 2012, Fed policy meeting, Bernanke and his crew announced the third QE move since the Great Recession took hold.

Specifically, the Fed’s press release said, “the committee agreed today to increase policy accommodation by purchasing additional agency mortgage-based securities at the pace of $40 billion a month.”

In short, the Fed was printing an extra $40 billion more a month and putting that money into the economy so that conditions wouldn’t weaken. By doing this the Fed guaranteed that interest rates would stay low.

What I have just done is this: I have given President Trump his best excuse yet to browbeat his Fed chairman, Jerome “Jay” Powell, into bringing interest rates down.

And if that happens to occur just seven and a half weeks before the 2020 election, it won’t be any different than what happened in 2012.

Trump could say (and he probably will say): “What’s good for the Democrats is good for me. Get with it, Jay.”

As I outlined in my last column, distrust in the Fed may already be happening.

Even though it has been known for weeks that the Fed intended to cut interest rates in September, borrowing costs have actually risen sharply this month. One explanation could be that confidence in the Fed had eroded with investors thinking the rate cut — which was announced on Sept. 18 — was being done to appease Trump and not because of any economic necessity.

We don’t know what the economy will be doing right before the next election. But if the doomsayers turn out to be correct — and I don’t think they will be — economic growth could be below the 2 percent annual rate it now appears to be.

When the Fed announced that pre-election QE blockbuster in 2012, the economy was growing by 2%. And in the third quarter of 2012, the GDP ended up — when all the revisions were done — with 3.1% annualized growth.

So growth was better then than it is now. And that gives the Fed a precedent to do what it wants before the next election, even if it is considered favoring Trump.

The Fed is supposed to be politically neutral. It’s not supposed to help get any president elected.

Nor is it supposed to help get any president thrown out of office, as former New York Fed president Bill Dudley inexplicably suggested it do to Trump a few weeks ago.

The Fed is supposed to be the nonpartisan umpire calling balls and strikes; the ref in football who calls penalties like he sees them and not because he has a certain loyalty.

But most of all, the Fed is not supposed to do anything close to an election that might be perceived — even slightly — as trying to sway voters.

Bernanke broke that rule in 2012. If Obama was badgering Bernanke, he was doing so quietly, which is something the current president doesn’t know how to do.

President Obama was re-elected and the Republican candidate Mitt Romney became a candidate who was defeated with the help of Bernanke.

Would Romney have won if the Fed hadn’t done a QE seven and a half weeks before the election? We will never know.

But since the economy was the primary issue on voters’ minds back then — as it always is — the Fed could have had an impact.

I don’t recall any hooting, hollering or complaining about the Fed’s actions in 2012.

So what right would Democrats and Trump-haters have to complain if the current Fed chairman Powell gave in to Trump’s pressure?

Keep your fingers crossed. Trump now has his excuse to get what he wants from the Fed — even if it’s a bad thing.