Fed candidate slams bank's 'Soviet' power over markets
Source: Financial Times
Fed candidate slams bank’s ‘Soviet’ power over markets
Trump pick Judy Shelton questions whether Federal Reserve should set interest rates
James Politi in Washington 4 HOURS AGO
Judy Shelton, a senior US official who is being vetted for a job on the board of the Federal Reserve, has attacked the central bank for wielding undemocratic, Soviet-style powers over markets and suggested it should not even be in the business of setting interest rates. ... In an interview with the Financial Times at the Trump International Hotel in Washington this week, Ms Shelton called on the Fed to “think about whether they are doing more harm than good”. If appointed to the board, she would be “asking tough questions” about its most basic mission, she said.
“How can a dozen, slightly less than a dozen, people meeting eight times a year, decide what the cost of capital should be versus some kind of organically, market supply determined rate? The Fed is not omniscient. They don’t know what the right rate should be. How could anyone?” Ms Shelton said. ... “If the success of capitalism depends on someone being smart enough to know what the rate should be on everything?.?.?.?we’re doomed. We might as well resurrect Gosplan,” she said, referring to the state committee that ran the Soviet Union’s planned economy. Ms Shelton did postdoctoral research on the Soviet economy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and was designated to be the Russia expert on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy.
The US representative on the board of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Ms Shelton is being considered by Donald Trump to be a Fed governor after his previous proposed candidates — Stephen Moore and Herman Cain — were dropped from contention. Both Mr Moore and Mr Cain withdrew this year after Republicans in the upper chamber balked at their limited qualifications for the job, personal factors that emerged during their vetting, and fears that they would not be independent enough from Mr Trump.
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Ms Shelton has long been sympathetic to the gold standard, which the US fully abandoned in the early 1970s in favour of a flexible exchange rate for the dollar. “People call me a goldbug, and I think, well, what does that make them? A Fed bug,” she says. Her big dream is a new Bretton Woods-style conference — “if it takes place at Mar-a-Lago that would be great” — to reset the international monetary system, replacing the current regime, mostly based on floating currencies. Ms Shelton said countries should agree to tie their currencies to a “neutral reference point, a benchmark” — which she envisages to be a “convertible gold-backed bond”.
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David Fahrenthold Retweeted
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Fed candidate, in interview at Trump-owned property, slams bank’s ‘Soviet’ power over market; says Fed shouldn’t do what it’s congressionally required to do; and recommends a major international conference at another Trump-owned property
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lookee here...another red don sycophant crackpot Fed nominee.
as far as keeping the 1% at the top and everyone else down.
