RUMOR: George Mason University Fellow Under Consideration for Federal Reserve Board Spot

David Beckworth

 At the "Strategies For Monetary Policy: A Policy Conference," there was some whispering going on that David Beckworth, a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, may be under consideration for one of the two empty Federal Reserve Board governorships.

Beckworth was at the conference and he played down the possibility when I asked him about it. He said that he was comfortable at his current position and might be more effective commenting on Fed policy from outside the central bank.

But George Selgin, who was also at the conference, told me that Beckworth would be an ideal candidate. He said that Beckworth has a long paper trail of consistency in his comments and views in favor of lower interest rates.

So don't think for a minute this would put an Austrian school economist at the Fed. A recent Beckworth paper, for example, discusses the financial stability case for a nominal GDP target.

When it comes to monetary policy, there appears to be very little Austrian school thinking at GMU at this time. It's all about different variations of how the Fed should tweak money supply manipulations.

-RW