Judy Shelton, Public Enemy # 1.

. . . [Judy Shelton, nominee to a vacancy on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System,] is 100 percent correct when she questions why a dozen people (the Federal Reserve Board of Governors) should set the prices of capital (interest rates) any more than they should set the price of cars, houses, or bubble gum.

Markets can do that and do it better - as they did before there even was a Federal Reserve system. Shelton opposes policies that would be more at home in a centrally planned economy.^[1]

Price setting is one of the many Achilles heels of centrally-planned economies. How exactly does one "rationally" determine the price of a pencil or a ham sandwich? How does the technocrat factor into the cost of a pencil the costs of mining the graphite and what exactly should graphite cost? How exactly does a wise man person factor the cost of feed for pigs and the farmer's daughter's tuition and car insurance into the price of the sandwich?

It's an impossible task to set prices from the Olympian heights, even with a spreadsheet, and the true cost of mispricing -- which happens always, without fail, and forever -- is bad price signals to producers and consequent inefficient resource usage and malinvestment. Malinvestment and dangerous use of retirement savings being but two of the plagues coursing through our economy as we speak.

So Shelton's point is an excellent one, definitely in the "emperor's new clothes" category. Why should any narrow elite make decisions for the hundreds of millions of ordinary citizens?

That's kind of the question of the hour, come down to it. What happened to representative government and just who are these swine who dare to determine our future and the future of our country?

Go Judy Shelton!

The Federal Reserve run by the proper sort of people.

Notes
^[1] "'Extreme, Ill-Considered Views' - 38 Fed Alum Urge Senate To Reject Judy Shelton Nomination." By Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge, 8/20/20 (emphasis removed).