Economists, Including 7 Nobel Winners, Urge Senate to Reject Judy Shelton’s Fed Nomination

Judy Shelton

I wrote this in August after Federal Reserve alumni signed a letter objecting to the nomination of Judy Shelton to the Federal Reserve:

As I have pointed out before, President Trump's nominee for a Federal Reserve governorship, Judy Shelton, is not exactly consistent in her monetary policy views. See: The Wacky Monetary Policy Thinking of Judy Shelton.

That said, she does occasionally come down on the side of sound money, including sometimes calling for a return to a gold standard.

This has the establishment Keynesian Fed alumni in a panic over the possibility that Shelton might get confirmed by the Senate for a Fed board of governor's seat...

What the alumni really fear, and to put it in terms of modern-day lefty Critical Theory parlance, is that Shelton may apply Critical Theory to the Fed itself and deconstruct the money printing operation.

Of course, Shelton is political as evidenced by her willingness to throw any previous positions she has held under the bus to gain the nomination and it is difficult to think she wouldn't stay in line with other Fed members and stay political if she gets one of the money printing votes. Still, it is fun to see the money printing alumni in hysterics.

Now, more than 100 Keynesian economists have signed a similar letter calling for Senate rejection of the Shelton nomination.

 The letter’s signatories include seven winners of the Nobel Prize for economics: Robert E. Lucas and Lars Peter Hansen of the University of Chicago, Christopher Sims from Princeton University, Eric Maskin and Oliver Hart of Harvard University, Peter Diamond of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University.

-RW