You’ll Never Guess What Happened To Trump’s Latest Fed Nominee

Yesterday, our friends at DealBook asked a question of Judy Shelton, the gold-standard proponent who is President Trump’s latest nominee to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors: “Is This the Next Leader of the Fed?”

She appears to be moving into a prime position to become the next Fed chair if Mr. Trump wins re-election, Ms. Smialek adds. The president has openly derided the current chairman, Jay Powell, and could well pick someone more in tune with him ideologically when Mr. Powell’s term is up in 2022.

There was, however, a better question for the Times to ask: Will Judy Shelton ever serve at the Fed in any capacity?

The former adviser to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign has advocated for the Fed to reduce U.S. interest rates over the past year in response to rate cuts by other central banks and to prevent the U.S. dollar from strengthening relative to other currencies.

“That’s a very, very dangerous path to go down. This beggar-thy-neighbor mutual currency devaluation is not in our interest, and it is not in the mandate of the Fed to pursue it,” said Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.).

Sen. Richard Shelby (R., Ala.), the committee’s longest-tenured member and its former chairman, said Ms. Shelton’s answers during the hearing had not resolved his doubts about whether she should serve. “I am concerned,” he said….

A third Republican, Sen. John Kennedy (R., La.), said he was undecided on her nomination. “Nobody wants anybody on the Federal Reserve that has a fatal attraction to nutty ideas,” he said.

If only there had been some way for DealBook to predict that a Trump nominee to the Fed with batshit ideas was more likely to find herself kicked to the curb by the president’s own party than to ascend to its highest office.

Path to Confirmation Dims for Fed Nominee After Republican Objections [WSJ]
Is This the Next Leader of the Fed? [DealBook]