On September 30, 2008, Shelton wrote a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed Loose Money And the Roots Of the Crisis.

These days, we don’t often refer to the validity of the money itself but rather to “monetary policy” and how the Federal Reserve has managed to calibrate the money supply to economic activity over the last two decades. There are plenty of critiques; the most pointed ones blame former Fed chief Alan Greenspan for keeping interest rates too low, too long.

If capitalism depends on designating a person of godlike abilities to manage demand and supply for all forms of money and credit — currency, demand deposits, money-market funds, repurchase agreements, equities, mortgages, corporate debt — we are as doomed as those wretched citizens who relied on central planning for their economic salvation.

It is time to take on the task of establishing a new foundation for international economic relations and financial relations — one dedicated to open markets and based on monetary integrity.

That’s how a gold standard works. We need to fix the money. Literally.

Once considered a longshot, Judy Shelton, Trump’s Hot-Button Nominee, may soon be on the Fed.

While her fate is far from guaranteed, the Senate Banking Committee is expected to approve Ms. Shelton’s nomination on Tuesday, putting her one simple-majority vote in the full Senate away from confirmation at a moment when the central bank is employing vast powers that she has a track record of questioning.

Ms. Shelton’s bid can advance to the full Senate without any support from the 12 Democrats on the committee so long as all 13 Republicans back her. Her nomination will come to a vote alongside Christopher Waller’s. Mr. Waller, the research director at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, was also nominated by Mr. Trump to the seven-seat Fed board. Mr. Waller, a more traditional nominee, is expected to clear the committee easily.

Group Think Advocates Attack

Sarah Boom Raskin, a former Fed governor and top Treasury official, said in an email: “The economic moment right now is too precarious to be rolling the dice on a person who has not wrestled with the current challenges of managing an economy that has been shocked by a pandemic, and whose views have not been fully articulated or reconciled with prior views.”

Diversity of Opinion Needed

There is no room on the Fed for anyone who does not think like the rest of the good old boy inflationists.

The bubble-blowing track record of Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellen, and Powell is amazingly bad. They have not gotten anything correct, but there is no room for diversity of opinion, which is what really matters.

Change of Opinion

I wonder if Shelton has changed her opinion about gold or she is saying what needs to be said to pass the Senate hearing.

Regardless, anyone with an ounce of common sense knows she will be a dramatic improvement over the rest of the lot.

“We Need to Fix the Money”

Bingo. The notion that a bunch of wizards sitting in a room can divine the correct interest rate and rate of inflation to steer the economy is proven nonsense.

Central planning of economies does not work.

Mish